BUG: LOAD HEADERONLY from 4 mm DAT Fails with Various Errors (158076)

SYMPTOMS

While performing a LOAD HEADERONLY command, any of the following problems may occur:

You receive SQL Server error 3201 (with no other errors in the errorlog or event viewer).
You receive OS error 1112 (no media in drive) in the SQL errorlog.
Tape drive indicators no longer function, and the tape drive becomes unresponsive to further requests.
The ISQL session issuing the LOAD HEADERONLY command stops responding.
You receive any of the following errors:

tprhdrs: read returned 1117 (The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.) reading first file header

tbsreadhdr: Tape rejected

CheckTapeInfo: Unable to load tape into the tape drive : OS Error : 1111 (The I/O bus was reset.)

The same problems may also occur while you are performing a dump. These problems occur with DDS 2 type 4 mm DAT drives.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, dump to a disk, and then use the Windows NT Backup utility to transfer the file to tape.

These problems have only been seen with DDS 2 4 mm DAT tape drives. Other types of tape drives function normally.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft SQL Server versions 6.0 and 6.5. We are researching this problem and will post new information herein the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.