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40GB tape asking for another at 24.5Gb

Patrick_Hinnant
Level 2
Hello, I provide IT support for SMB's in my area. Have had a lot of success solving clients Veritas back problems due in large part to those of you who help in this forum. Thanks!

Client has a 41GB info store. Using 8.60 Rev. 3878. The tapes are HP 40's. At around the 24.5 point the job waits for another tape.

Last night I popped a tape in, performed an inventory and it said the tape contained 42 GB of data, making me think the job was appending not overwriting as I set it up to do. So I performed a Long Erase on that tape. This morning it has again stopped 24.5.

Any suggestions? Thanks!
3 REPLIES 3

Patrick_Hinnant
Level 2
Just to add to the info above. As I said, I performed a long erase on the tape last night. The current job is on hold at 24,566,725,425. When I look at the statistics on the tape it says Byte's Written: 41150.469 MB. If I erased the tape and the job says only 24.5 GB has been backed up then how can the tape contain 41Gb of data?

Ken_Putnam
Level 6
You said your tapes were "HP 40s" do you mean 20/40 or 40/80?

if you mean 20/40, that means 20GB uncompressed adn 40 GB compressed at 2:1. 2:1 is a marketing fantasy not an engineering promise. I generally figure on about 1.3:a as rule of thumb. 24 GB on a 20 GB tape is about 1.2:1. A little on the low side, but entirely beleiveable

As for the stats. BackupExec does not automatically reset the bytes written when you llabel or erase a tape, You have to do that from the media tab, right click the tape\properties\Reset

Patrick_Hinnant
Level 2
Ken Thanks, The tapes are in fact 20/40's (I thought they were 40/80). I had worked on the issues one-by-one starting with OFO errors and my last "error" was no error infact :( I guess when your head is do deep into a problem you miss the obvious. Thanks again for your help!