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Tape drivers and speed of backups

James_Lane
Level 3

‎12-19-2007 02:00 AM

Hi.  I run Backup Exec on a Windows Server 2003 with a Trivan 20/40Gb tape drive.  So far the Full backup is 9Gb and the Incremental is just over 1Gb.  Big stuff, I know!  I am now messing around with a 500Gb Buffalo LinkStation in order to first backup to that and then to the tape drive using Duplicate of the job.  Speeds to the NAS are great but then to the tape is appauling, far worse than it was when orig just to tape.  It is running at less than 1Mb per 5 seconds.  What can I do?  The NAS is on a 1Gb network link (but don't ask me how that was setup - it just was) and the driver for the drives is Microsoft as at 01/10/02.  I can't find a newer version for the Seagate STT3401A drive as it has ended up with Quantum who don't give a **bleep** about legacy drives from Seagate.  Any pointers would be most welcome.
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4 REPLIES 4

James_Lane
Level 3

‎12-19-2007 07:18 AM

Have since discovered that the copying of data from this box is drastically slower than a backup to it.  What is the fastest way to have two backups?  One on a NAS and one on a Tape.
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Ken_Putnam
Level 6

‎12-19-2007 08:24 AM

The latest Symantec driver pack  http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/273853.htm   has a drive for your tape drive.  Try that
 
 
As for the tape speed - if you backup directly to tape is the speed acceptable?
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James_Lane
Level 3

‎12-20-2007 03:59 AM

Thank you.  I have downloaded the new patch.  Yes, directly to tape is ok.  Directly to this NAS is 4 times faster.  From NAS to tape is 10 times slower, at least.

I run directly through a 10/100 Lyksys switch so I avoid the Cisco box that sits at the "front" of my network.  I don't suppose the network cards are Gb configured or enabled.  I don't think I need this when only dealing with 9Gb files to-date.  I just wish for the NAS to Tape to be as fast as it was when backing up to tape.

Is the Duplicate job a backup or a copy of the file?

I also notice that when my backup produced 4 files the duplicate stopped when trying to move the 4th (system state?) and now it does so within the single file at the byte position I would expect the last part to be.  The error is varied from the job running immediately after the backup to a manual rerun of the duplicate as below:

1) 45d - The request could not be performed because of an I/O error
2) a00084ca - the data being read from the media is inconsistent

I have also had:
Event logs of: 57612 - a format inconsistency was was encountered during a tape read operation " on the NAS" ...

There seems to be something wrong with the saving of the last part of the backup.


EDIT - FORGET THE SPEED ISSUE - EMBARRASED TO SAY SERVER WAS ATTACHED TO ROUTER AND NOT SWITCH.  SORTED NOW THOUGH!  More to come re this reading back of the file...


Message Edited by James Lane on 12-20-2007 04:27 AM
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James_Lane
Level 3

‎12-20-2007 06:58 AM

Update...

Attaching the server through the switch has solved the speed problem.

The duplication errors seem to be down to the number of sets in a file and the size set for each file (media).  This is all going to the NAS.  I had the number of sets at 1 originally.  Then changed to 4.  This is what I think then happened.  The next backup did not put all 4 sets into one file because it could add to some previous ones until it "filled" them.  At one point - using the Restore - I noticed that the most recent file name was number 26 and yet I had a file named 27.  This file 27 was exactly the size of the system state etc (the 4th set) and it was this part of the backup that was failing to be read when trying to duplicate this job.  Why BE had not registered this extra file I do not know.  Any ideas?

So I then changed the sets to 10 per file.  All worked fine, file 27 filled out.  At last!  But I still have a question:

What is the criteria for setting the number of sets and the filesize?  Will the backup put one set in an older file and then if the file is full start a new one?  Is this good practice?  Can it be avoided?  Why was file 27 not logged?  I know my last backup worked at 10 per file but I feel this is a temporary fix.  Ideally I would like each backup in a separate file with all 4 sets in it.

Thanks for the replies in advance.
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