Backup Size Question

[ZGoggins]

I have about 10 servers that are getting backed up. All to an 800gb tape. After the backup is finished it shows the byte count to be about 5600gb. This doesnt really make a whole lot of sense to me. We only used 1 backup tape. So how can there be such a huge difference? I am running backup exec 12.5

[lmosla]

Hello Zgoggins,

Seems like there might be some communication problems between the device and backup exec reporting.  What is the version of the Tape drive?  Do you have the most recent updates in Live update installed? Also verify you are using the Symantec driver in your tape device.

[Larry_Fine]

Is the 5600GB the native (uncompressed) size of the 10 server you are backing up?  7:1 compression ratio is not impossible if you have the right data on these server, but it sure isn't typical.

I assume you are using LTO?  what generation of drive and what generation of media?

[pkh]

The byte count is amount of data processed by the job and not necessarily the amount of data backed up.  For example, if you are doing an incremental backup, there are a lot of files which are processed but not backed up.  To see the amount of data backed up, click on the tape and check the Data statistic.  This is the amount of data sent to the tape drive.  See my article below to see how to interpret tape statistics.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/tape-statistics-explained