Reported free space on tape is incorrect

[alphadogtech]

Retrospect v6.0.204

OSX Server 10.3.9

Exabyte VXA-1f (firewire) tape drive

 

 

We've reached a point where Retrospect reports available space of 3.6 GB on any of our 33 GB tapes -- new or used. Erasing the tape does not change the reported free space.

 

Am I missing something in Retrospect, or does this look more like a hardware issue ?

 

Thanks.

 

 

[Mayoff]

http://kb.dantz.com/article.asp?article=5611&p=2

 

http://kb.dantz.com/article.asp?article=5612&p=2

 

 

[alphadogtech]

Thanks for the reply -- I guess that I should've included more detail on the problem.

 

It's not only that the available space is being mis-reported, but that when we fill the supposedly-available space during a backup we're prompted to insert another tape. The most that we can fit on a tape is 3.6 GB.

 

If I understand the point of the referenced links correctly, this shouldn't be happening. Additionally, the tape capacity setting in Retrospect has *not* been modified, so I wouldn't think that this is the issue.

 

Thanks

[rhwalker]

We've reached a point where Retrospect reports available space of 3.6 GB on any of our 33 GB tapes -- new or used.

What changed? Did it previously behave properly?

 

There's a possibility that it's a driver issue. The version of Retrospect that you are running is several years old. Is there a reason that you haven't done the update? It's free.

Current Retrospect is 6.1.230, Current Retrospect Driver Update (RDU) is 6.1.15.101. Both are here:

Retrospect updates

 

Note that, after updating Retrospect from 6.0.x to 6.1.x, all of your 6.0.x backup sets will become "read only" because of a change in backup set format.

 

We have an Exabyte VXA-2 drive (SCSI with autoloader) and are seeing about 115 to 120 GB (compressed) on each X-23 tape (160 GB nominal, compressed) with our files, so it's not something inherent, so I can verify that Retrospect does write until it sees EOT (or has a tape error).

 

What happens if you use Exabyte's vxatool utility to write a whole bunch of stuff to a blank tape? Are you able to spit out 33 GB to the tape without Retrospect in the loop?

 

Russ

Edited September 10, 2008 by Guest

[alphadogtech]

Thanks for the suggestions/info.

 

I downloaded & installed the application and driver updates, then performed a small backup (600MB) to an erased tape. When checking on the available remaining space, I get 2.8GB.

 

Next, I downloaded the vxatool utility from Tandberg (it's a nice little utility -- thanks!). Since I didn't have time for a full 33GB run, I configured it for 5GB, which would still put me over the 3.6GB limit that I'm hitting. The utility copied and confirmed the 5GB w/o problems. When I have more time, I can try a larger run.

 

I'm not certain that Retrospect has ever worked correctly, since we've never made any real demands of it. However, we're trying to ramp up our backup process to include workstations in addition to our fileserver -- and that's where we started to see problems.

 

 

[rhwalker]

When checking on the available remaining space, I get 2.8GB.

The remaining space number is meaningless. You can set it to any number you want; regardless, Retrospect will write until EOT or tape error. See the links that Robin Mayoff provided above:

Set Capacity preference KB article

Set Capacity is meaningless KB article

 

It will be interesting to see your results with the updated software. You now know, from vxatool, that the drive is OK.

 

Russ

[alphadogtech]

Performing a 20GB backup was successful. Looks like the issue was with the older version of Retrospect/device drivers. A great lesson on keeping current with updates -- even if you're not experiencing issues.

 

Thanks for the help !