mikestan86 Posted February 14, 2013 Report Share Posted February 14, 2013 Hi, I am running a daily incremental backup script to a tape drive carousel using LTO 4 tapes. The backup is running fine but the only problem is it's getting to be very big, spanning 21 tapes and each tape is not being fully used (see screen shot). Each tape is 1.5TB and a lot of the tape is being wasted. This doesn't seem to be a very efficient way of backing up to tape, am I doing something wrong? What could be causing this? Additional Script info: No grooming Fast Catalog Rebuild Media Action: No media action I can post additional info if needed. Any help to understand this would greatly be appreciated. Thanks, Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted February 15, 2013 Report Share Posted February 15, 2013 Each tape is 1.5TB assuming 2:1 compression. Today many file types are already compressed and can't be compressed more: image files, audio files, video files, PDF files, ZIP files etc. LTO-4 tapes have a native capacity of 800GB, which you exceed. So some file types you are backing up are compress-able. Another reason for "wasted" tape is feeding the tape drive too slow. That makes the drive creating empty blocks on the tape while waiting for data. This is to avoid stopping the tape, backing up a bit and start again (which will waste considerable time). What is the source for the backup? A slow client that is being backed up over a (comparatively) slow network? Or a fast local volume on the Retrospect Server itself? I suggest you archive the current media set and start over on a new set of tapes. 21 tapes is a lot. What if one tape goes bad? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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