Intermittent problem with running backups....

[cadams4070]

Dear All,

I am enlisting any and all help on this matter. I am new to the backup process and desperately need your help. We had to replace the tape drive as our tape drive went south several weeks ago. I put the new tape drive in on Friday Aril 15th. I attempted to do a full backup on the server and the tape ejected during the loading process. I aborted the job and deleted it. I setup the backups to run at 10pm that night, which is normal and came in on Monday and the same thing happened but I received a Media Request asking me to insert overwritable media, so, I did and watch it very closely. When I received another media request asking me to put the original tape in I put that one in. About and hour later it asked me for the second tape I put it and so on. Finally the backups completed. This was yesterday. I put a new tape in for last night and came in this morning and received the exact same message. What am I doing wrong or what is happening?

Since before our tape drive failed several weeks ago. The backups would run every single night successfully and I didn't change any of the settings.

Please help me. I don't know what to do anymore. We are running Version 8.0 Rev 3878.

Mayday!! Mayday!!

[Ken_Putnam]

Sounds like the job is now requiring two tapes, and the swapping is so that the job can finish, and then verify.

Is the new drive the same model as the old one?
What kind of drive is it/
Are you using HW or SW compression?
if HW, from the devices tab right click the drive\properties and verify that "Enable Hardware Compression" is checked

[cadams4070]

Yes, it is the same drive as the old one. It is a Seagate 4MM 8K (32K,10,7,E) Also, within the properties the Enable hardware compression is checked. I remember last night when setting up the back up within the Vertias Backup Exec. I edited the job and chose hardware compression, if no hardware compression then software compression. <-- This is the only thing I changed, do you think this had something to do with it? I am not sure because this same vicious cycle has happened every night since I installed our new drive and I didn't change this until last night. What can I do to remedy this? Again, keep in mind, I am extremely new to the backup process

[Ken_Putnam]

Are you getting about the same total data backed up as with the old drive? How much is reported?

You can try switching the job to Software Compression only and the job logs will report the comrpession ratio for each job step.

It is a long shot, but pull out the manual fo rthe drive and see if there is a switch somewhere on the drive to enable/disable hardware compression. if so, verify that it is set properly.

[cadams4070]

The data amount has significantly jumped. Some of which the have been compressed already as it was saved to the network. As far as tape drive, you can enable/disable hardware compression. I have noticed though back with the old drive, we backed up the same amount of data in one night's backup successfully on one tape. In fact, in March we backed up more data on one tape. Why wouldn't it happen now? What could be different now?