30GB tape full after 18 GB

[lawpoop]

Having a problem with Retrospect 5.15 on Win2k Advanced server.

 

 

 

For more than 2.5 years it's been chugging along nicely. However, this past week, it crapped out on us.

 

 

 

We have two hard drives, C and H, each a 9 GB SCSI drive (18 GB total).

 

 

 

Our script is setup to back up on Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Week1 - Week4 Fri, Even month, and Odd Month. We have a seperate tape for each day listed above. Worked okay until the past week.

 

 

 

Last week retrospect started ejecting the tape and asking for a second tape, e.g. 2Wed on Wednesday. It thinks the first tape is filled after backing up the C and some of H. We are using Onstream 30 GB cartridges from ADR. The tape drive is an Onstream from ADR, not sure of the exact model. I am certain, however, that it's specs show it can use a 30 GB tape.

 

 

 

I've gone so far as to erase and rebuild both the script and the backup volumes. Same thing.

 

 

 

There was even a place to estimate the size of the tape, where I entered "3000" (MB).

 

Use hardware compression is checked.

 

 

 

What is the problem? Retrospect seems to think this is like a 15 GB tape. I know that it can't 'read' the tape and find out how big it is. Can it really be running out of space? The disks are not full, but they are over 15 GB.

 

 

 

Please help!

 

 

 

Steve Lefevre

 

 

 

slefevre@i-m-i-international.com

[lawpoop]

Forgot to say -

 

 

 

I checked the log, and no error message. But examining the volumes (or whatever they're called), it says it's full at 13.8 GB (which I believe is the actual capacity for a 15GB tape?), and requires another member to complete the backup.

 

 

 

So what's the deal? The label on the tape clearly says 30GB. The drive we have can handle 30GB tapes. We have some 10 30GB tapes. I would doubt that they are all mislabeled and are actually 15GBs.