This time around drive inside out above mention tape library broke down and after extensive troubleshooting with, somehow I felt very reluctant, Quantum support people (with heavy south-east Asia accents) they finally agreed to send an onsite engineer to fix it.
How silly is was from me to assume this qualified service engineer is going to fix anything or perform onsite drive replacement. As it turns out that the tape drive in this model of autoloader - 3, CAN NOT be field replaced and a Quantum solution is to ship WHOLE NEW LIBRARY. Bear with me - this unit is 2U Full Length sized, holding up to 16 LTO (1/2" sized) tapes.
Now to the juicy part:
The library in its normal operation allows only one of two it's tape magazines to be ejected at the same time, however, the new unit came without magazines so we need to change between them. Reading documentation revealed nothing but a short mention of the mysterious "manual" removal procedure, but no mention of exactly that needs to be done. Short phone to support lifted the mystery: A very special tool required for a job - stainless steel ruler! Or in lack of one I successfully used a diner/bread knife. The trick is to insert into the lower part of the slot between magazine and mailslot (Look on the image below) for about 3" deep until you hear a quiet click and you'd be able to release 2nd magazine.
I strongly suggest you fully power down the autoloader before performing this operation.
Now to the juicy part:
The library in its normal operation allows only one of two it's tape magazines to be ejected at the same time, however, the new unit came without magazines so we need to change between them. Reading documentation revealed nothing but a short mention of the mysterious "manual" removal procedure, but no mention of exactly that needs to be done. Short phone to support lifted the mystery: A very special tool required for a job - stainless steel ruler! Or in lack of one I successfully used a diner/bread knife. The trick is to insert into the lower part of the slot between magazine and mailslot (Look on the image below) for about 3" deep until you hear a quiet click and you'd be able to release 2nd magazine.
I strongly suggest you fully power down the autoloader before performing this operation.