Installing Standalone Drives; Identifying The Drive; Connecting The Drive; Moving Drives - HP HPE StoreEver LTO-8 Ultrium Tape Technical Reference Manual

Installing standalone drives

If you are installing the tape drive on a UNIX system, refer to the UNIX, Linux, and OpenVMS
Configuration Guide , Volume 5 of the HPE LTO Ultrium Technical Reference Manual.

Identifying the drive

The model name is on the front panel and the product and serial numbers are on a label on the bottom of
the drive.

Connecting the drive

SAS connection
The rear panel connections of external SAS standalone drives consist of a Mini SAS connector. The drive
must be connected to the host server/expander with a good quality external SAS cable that is as short as
possible. If you are attaching a SAS drive to a server, you need a properly installed and configured SAS
host bus adapter (HBA) or a built-in SAS controller on your server with a spare SAS port. For optimum
performance, your tape drive should be connected to a 6 Gb or faster SAS host bus adapter or SAS
controller, but the drive will also work with a 3 Gb SAS HBA.

Moving drives

If there is a tape in the drive, unload it before powering down and moving the drive. When the drive is
powered down, there is no physical lock on the tape reels. If you leave a tape threaded in the drive with
the power off, the reels could rotate, causing a loop of tape to occur in the tape path. When the drive is
next powered up, the tape could then fall off the guides and be damaged.
If for any reason you must move a drive with a tape threaded, move it slowly and carefully, making no
sudden movements that could cause the reels to rotate.
46 Installing standalone drives