BE 2012 not Compressing Data

[jadesina1]

I have just uograded my BE from 2010 to 2012. before the uograde, i used 2 tapes for both my daily incremental and weekly full backup. but i noticed after the upgrade, my users data alone takes about 3 taped alone to run a full weekly backup. my compression configuratio didnt change from what it was when i was running BE2010 which "Hardware( if available, otherwise software). can someone assist me cos nothing has change and i sincerely diont know what is it that i'm doing that isnt right. I  am using LTO2 tape drive by the way.

[Jaydeep_S]

1. Could you confirm if you have applied all the available hotfixes and patches.

2. Make sure that the latest Device Drivers are installed and tape drive is using Symantec drivers.

3. Check the work around mentioned in this technote.

4. Try and confirm if the compressions is actually enabled on the backup using this technote.

[jadesina1]

i am presently on BE sp1a, the tape drive is using symantec drivers, and yes compression is enabled.

[CraigV]

...I'd suggest getting hold of the vendor's diagnostic utility and running a compression test against the drive. Stop the BE services first before doing so. Report back with an update on what the test showed.

Thanks!

[jadesina1]

Thanks craigv. but i had just ran a test using this technote 'http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH50960" and evrything seem fine on the hardware.

[CraigV]

...OK. Next thing to try do:

1. Remove the tape drive from BE.

2. Remove the tape drive from Windows Device Manager. Make sure that the drivers are removed.

3. Disconnect the tape drive and turn it off, and restart the server. Make sure the drive isn't showing within BE and Device Manager, and shut down the server.

4. Reconnect the drive, start up the server. Use tapeinst.exe to install the tape drivers. Run the backup job again and check.

Thanks!

[pkh]

Create a directory and fill it with some text files.  Backup this directory to tape with hardware compression.  If you see some compression, this means that your hardware compression is working.

If this test is successful, then it could be that the nature of your data has changed.  There may be more uncompressible data, like zipped files.  See my article on this subject

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/compression-short-explanation