Ecrix and Retrospect

[gaurban]

HI -

 

 

 

I've been using the Retrospect product for many years, in the last few years I switched over to the PC version just for ease and speed (my Mac at the time was rather old and my new drive was firewire, not supported on that version of Mac). So, here I am with version 6.0 and still having issues with the Ecrix tape drive - and I was wondering if anybody else out there is using this beast and could answer some questions.

 

 

 

The tapes I'm using, with compression are supposed to be 66gb, I'm lucky if I actually see 36gb, am I missing a setting or is this just a feature and that's the way it goes? My current network backup consists of approximately 45gb for the full backup and due to financial constraints, I need the rest to last for 3 months, sometimes it does, more often not. I have checked the settings on the drive, preference towards capacity over speed, put the current firmware on the drive, updated the Retrospect drivers, clients and checked that Retrospect is doing the hardware compression. Did I miss anything (Please I really hope I am, because this is not good otherwise)

 

 

 

Your assitance is greatly appreciated, comments and questions welcome.

 

 

 

Gerri

[AmyJ]

The following FAQ's go into specifics about capacity and compression:

 

 

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=common_questions_detail&ACTION=COMMON_QUESTIONS_DETAIL&id=49

[gaurban]

 

 

Amy -

 

Thanks for the information and the link, guess I knew that - maybe a better way to ask the question would be is anybody else out there using this product and what are you seeing? I know it's supposed to be about 30% savings on space - I'm seeing maybe a 1% so what are other people seeing?

 

 

 

Gerri

[tdenbo]

Unless you have compressible files, no file compression will make any difference. My experience is that most files are not compressible.

 

My recommendation is - forget compression. Just look at the uncompressed capacity of any media.