Exabyte VXA-1a tape drive and tar

[Andy Allen]

I'm trying to use an Exabyte VXA-1a tape drive to provide backup for RH9
system. tar seems to work when writing to the tape (no apparent errors
and it seems to finish correctly) but when attempt is made to read the
tape using  tar -tvf /dev/st0
I get the following error message:

tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Any ideas please?

Andy