How to determine when your backup tape is full

[538418658]

I have been using Backup exec 10.0 now for about 2 weeks on my new server. We are backing up to a LTO 200GB-400GB tape drive. The first week we were backing up around 294GB of data sucessfully. Over the past week, when I get to the office each morning, the backup job from the night before is still showing active and it has a job status of " ? Loading Media". It appears that it has backed up about 296GB of data and I am wondering if the tape is somehow full, and it is requesting another tape? How can you find out if your tape is out of room or not? I have the my backup job set to overwrite media only, and I realize that I can't expect to get a full 400GB of data written to the tape, but I would think that it would hold more than 296GB when it should be able to hold closer to 400GB

[Michael_McKenne]

You have a 200 GB uncompressed backup tape. It will handle 400 GB @ 2::1 compression. Usually, you don't get this. I get 1:1 to 1.3 : 1 compression on average. So It would be 200 GB (1:1) to 260 GB (1.3:1) . Check what your compression ratio is and do the math.

File compression is an exact science. MPeg, pictures, movies, game files, SQL files will not compress. Some get under 1:1 compression on backup tapes. Word, Excel, text get awesome compression. Check your tape log and see what your compression ratio for the backup is.

[538418658]

I have searched the job log, but I don't see anything that references the compression ratio. Is there no other place in Backup Exec that will specifically tell me why it is asking for another tape?

[Jeff_Allen]

if you click on the devices tab, then select the drive or slot your tape is in you will see details for the tape on the bottom pain of the screen. One of the detail sections tells you the compression ratio.

[Ashutosh_Tamhan]

HI there,

just as Jeff mentioned you need to look at the media properties under devices. You could also look for the used capacity and available capacity to see how much has been written to the tape.


Regards,
Ashutosh

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