Ask HN: Strange bug workarounds?
I worked on an HSM system (hybrid disk&#x2F;tape archival) which suddenly started having lots of I&#x2F;O errors writing to tape. We tried new media. We tried new drives. We double-checked cables and SFPs. No luck.<p>Finally we tracked down the issue: when the <i>contents</i> of a particular file were archived to tape, the tape drive crashed. I suspect it was a tape firmware issue, maybe to do with the native compression.<p>The workaround was to mark that particular file as &quot;not to be archived&quot; and we stopped having media and drive errors.