Backup Exec 10 and HP Ultrium RW 800GB data cartridge

[B_L__Bouwman]

Hello!
I have a small question concerning the use of a HP Ultrium RW 800GB data cartridge in combination with BackupExec 10d. We're using a HP 1x8 autoloader Ultrium 960.

What happens is that the backupjob keeps asking for a new tape around the 300-400GB of data. Which is strange. I know the tapes uses a 2:1 compression ratio, but still we should be apple to backup around the 600GB on one tape.

Can someone tell me if I have to adjust some settings so that the 800GB tapes are used correctly or am I doing something else wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[noodles]

Hi,

is hardware compression enabled in the properties of the device?
What do the statistics of the media say?

Regards
/Stefan

[B_L__Bouwman]

Hi!
The setting 'Enable compression' is selected on the 'Drive Properties' tab 'Configuration'. I think you mean this setting if you talk about hardware compression?

The settings for 'Preferred configuration' are:
Block size (per device): 64K
Buffer size (per device): 64K
Buffer cuont: 10
High water count: 0

The 'Media Statistics' (of one tape) say:
Used Capacity: 193GB
Available Capacity: 239GB
Compression Ratio: 1,3:1
No errors.

[Peter_Ludwig]

You wrote:

>Used Capacity: 193GB
>Available Capacity: 239GB
>Compression Ratio: 1,3:1

Not so far away.

1. native capacity is around 370 GB (They use wrong Gigabytes for marketing reasons, anybody has exact data for these drives?).
Compression ratio 1:1.3 is quite normal also for our office data.
So about 480Gb fit on one cartidge.
Available capacity may give you native capacity.

greetings Peter.

[noodles]

Hi,

do you use Veritas Device Drivers for that drive?
If not see
http://support.veritas.com/rd/bews-drivers.htm

/Stefan

[B_L__Bouwman]

Strange thing though is that the old drive (LTO2 type) which uses 200GB tapes had a higher compression ratio than this one :-(.

I was thinking if I should change or add some settings under "tools" - "options". But all I can see is "Media Management" en "Bar Code Rules". So initially I thought that BackupExec or the drive just uses the maximum capacity of the tape itself.

[B_L__Bouwman]

Yes. Well if that is the same as the option you can select during installation of BackupExec. During installation I have the option selected which uses the Veritas Tape drivers.

[noodles]

You can check the drivers with the Windows Device Manager.

Do you user barcodes?

/Stefan

[B_L__Bouwman]

It sais:
Hewlett Packard LTO Ultrium-3 drive
Driver Provider: VERITAS Software Inc.
Driver date: 5-1-2005
Driver version: 5.1
Digital Signer: Not digitally signed.

No wo don't use barcodes anymore. This is because this drive doesn't support barcodes. So we label the tapes at the moment.

[noodles]

Please take a look at this:

http://support.veritas.com/docs/255054

Sometimes it can be firmware issues.

Also this can be helpfull:
http://support.veritas.com/docs/199542

Regards
/Stefan

[B_L__Bouwman]

Thanks for the info. I've checked, but we allready using the latest firmware. The total amount of GB's shown is good enough for me. 391Gb total available.

I invetigated the tape properties somewhat more. There is one thing that seems incorrect. "Appendable Until:" states "Not Appendable (End marker unreadable)".

So I probably need to erase the tapes. According to the documentation. But it beats me how this happend. The server didn't restart during a backupjob and tapes always are grabbed from Scratch Media if they need to be overwritten.

[Deepali_Badave]

Hello,

You can refer the following technote:

Backups fail to get double the amount of the native capacity recorded to a media, even when hardware compression is being utilized.

http://support.veritas.com/docs/199542

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