Ultrium Drive reporting End Of Media - before the End of Media!

[nickfoster]

 Hi all,
I'm having a problem with an Ultrium tape drive. I'm running Backup Exec for Netware, version 9.20.
Our Ultrium tapes are supposed to have a native capacity of 200GB, but when our nightly backups are running once the tape gets to 145 - 150GB full it stops the job and ejects the tape. The alert shows as End of Media reached.
I've tried reformatting the tape, but I just get the smae thing. Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can get the full 200GB capacity onto the tape? Our server hold about 170 - 180GB.

Cheers

NICK

[Marksw · Accepted solution]

 What you say "Our Ultrium tapes are supposed to have a native capacity of 200GB", do you mean they are 200/400 tapes (LTO2)?
If so, then there's a problem, and you might need to use any manufacturer-reported diagnostics to see what capacity the tapes are being reported as. If they are 100/200 tapes (LTO1), then it's probably that your data is compressing 1.6:1, and you've simply hit the end of the tape.

Mark

[Andy_Welburn]

the amount of data that you can store on a tape depends upon the type of data being stored. Some data compresses better than others & in some cases use of compression can actually increase the amount of resources utilised (compressing a compressed file may result in the file becoming larger).

Just a 'real-world' example of the vagaries of data storage on tapes, we use LTO3 tape drives (400Gb native / 800Gb compressed) & the reported amount of data stored on our full tapes varies from 340Gb to 1Tb!

[nickfoster]

 Hi,
Thanks for the responses. Yes the tapes are 200/400 LTO2 tapes. When I look at the media properties in backup exec it shows the current capacity as 200GB.

NICK