bjhinkle Posted September 5, 2006 Report Share Posted September 5, 2006 I have recently upgraded our 1x10 autoloader to vxa3 from vxa2. I was not getting any compression running retrospect 6.5 on the vxa2. I was told it was because of the data I was compressing (alot of pdf files). So, when the vxa3 came out I thought for sure I could get all our data on one tape. So, I upgraded to 7.0 and installed the vxa3. Well, I'm not even getting the native capacity for the drive which is 160gig. Every night retrospect asks for another tape after only 75-79gig. I have talked with exabyte and they had me run a test with software they emailed me and the result was 160gig. Since then I have been talking with emc for a couple of weeks with no result. Was hoping someone with the same drive could give me some help. I have all the latest firmware/software/client/driver updates. Using retrospect 7 with x23 tapes, not using any compression within retrospect per tech supports advise. Don't even care about compression right now anyway just trying to get native capacity. The drive is connected to a LSI PCI-X Ultra360 SCSI card. Running windows server 2003 on a 2.4ghz xeon processor 512mb Ram. I completely uninstalled retrospect 6.5 and deleted all old scripts/config files and installed 7.0 and setup new scrips/backup sets. Backup clients running windows 2000, xp, 2003 server. Any help would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhinkle Posted September 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2006 My bad. Actually upgraded to retrospect 7.5. Sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exabyter Posted September 7, 2006 Report Share Posted September 7, 2006 I did the same conversion, and since the upgrade my Retrospect 7.0.326 can't recognize the VXA3 drive in the autoloader. The VXA3 device is visible in Retrospect through NT Passthrough but only the Exabyte Library (1.07) is a working part. The VXA3 is working itself, I can test reading/writing with VXATool when I manually insert the tape into but Retrospect doesn't use it. Any help is appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaeln Posted September 7, 2006 Report Share Posted September 7, 2006 Hi, Have you checked the loader settings on the 1x10 autoloader? The VXA-2 drives handle 80GB native and the fact that you are still seeing the same capacities with a VXA-3 drive might suggest that the loader may not be fully recognizing the tape drive correctly. Can you check the options on the loader menu? I believe the VXAtool also has an option to update the inquiry strings on the loader. You may want to verify that the inquiry strings on the VXAtool are showing up properly ie. VXA 1x10 1U and VXA-3/VXA-320. Also, is this the Firewire loader or the SCSI loader? If I remember correctly, I think you need to make the distinction in the VXATool. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhinkle Posted October 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 11, 2006 The autoloader says it's a VXA3 installed. I went as far as resetting the autoloader to factory defaults then setup again to see if it made a differenct. Went in and changed the inquiry string to VXA3 with no luck. This is the SCSI autoloader. I was able to get my hands on a 45 day trial of version 7 retrospect to see if I got the same problem. Read a post that stated similar problem and fixed when changed back to version 7. I uninstalled version 7.5 then installed 7 and updated to latest patch, drivers, etc. and ran a backup. Copied around 79gig to tape A then switched to tape B and finished. I am about to pull what little hair I have left out over this one. Retrospect techs seem stumped also. May have to suggest moving my case up to level 2 support if available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhinkle Posted October 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 11, 2006 Going to try and disable antivirus software running on this server to see if it may have something to do with the speed of the backups. Tech support still seems to think it has something to do with the speed at which data is copied to tape. I have looked in the logs and am getting 260-600mb depending on which server is beeing backed up. I will disable antivirus and run another backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 11, 2006 Report Share Posted October 11, 2006 Note that the tape format type (VXA-2 or VXA-3) is set when you start writing on the tape; if the tape has been written, it can't change format type. Are you trying this on new tapes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhinkle Posted October 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 Where were you two months ago when I started having this problem? After posting last night I uninstalled the anitvirus and setup a new backup set to run a backup. I decided to reset the inquiry string in the vxa tool back to default. While in vxatool I clicked on the usage button on the diag screen and noticed the tape said it had a capacity of only 80gig. I erased the tape with the vxatool and then clicked usage again, it said capacity 160gig. Ran a backup and got the whole 129gig on one tape. Woohoo!!!! So, I came to the conclusion that there must be some sort of header on the tape after being used in retrospect that sets the native capacity. The only strange thing is I had erased a tape with the vxa tool and used a new tape many backups ago without any change in native capacity. The only thing I can think of is there must be some other reason in addition to the tape header that was causing this. So.... I'm going to add the antivirus back, run a backup. Next, I will uninstall 7.0 and reinstall 7.5 then run a backup. Each time before running a backup I will erase the tapes and make sure the vxatool sees a capacity of 160gig. Not sure if the antivirus or the 7.5 version may have been a problem but adding them back one at a time should tell me. The only discouraging thing is retrospect tech support never said anything about the header or format type as rhwalker says above. They did ask me to use a new tape which I did as stated above. Will post results next week, and hopefully this issue will be closed. By the way thanks rhwalker, I do really wish I had insite from you two months ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 Quote: So, I came to the conclusion that there must be some sort of header on the tape after being used in retrospect that sets the native capacity. The tape format header is written by the drive; Retrospect has no control over this part. Retrospect does write its own headers with the Backup Set and Member names. Quote: By the way thanks rhwalker, I do really wish I had insite from you two months ago. Our firm is all Mac, so I rarely visit the Windows forums. Good luck, Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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