Videotape unreliable?

[jimc at math.ucla.edu]

We have a 8mm 2.2Gbyte SCSI tape system from Software Associates which we
are using for dumps, about 1 Gbyte in 16 various-sized files.  This system
uses the standard Sun SCSI driver (SunOS v3.5).  Frequently it performs
fine, but on 10-20% of the dump sets it will dump a few files, get an I/O
error, and be unable to recover.  That is, that dump cannot continue and
all subsequent dumps also get I/O errors, likely on the first write.  This
behavior seems like a bad spot on tape but is not repeatable.  

Has anyone seen this behavior -- and what did you do about it?  If the
cure is a smarter device driver that can recover from temporary write
failures, a pointer to such a driver would be appreciated.  Thank you.  

James F. Carter        (213) 825-2897
UCLA-Mathnet;  6608B MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA  90024-1555
ARPA: jimc at math.ucla.edu            BITNET: jimc%math.ucla.edu at INTERBIT