Topic: Turning on hardware tape compression of a quantum SDLT220

[pearless]

Hi,

I recently went over the 100GB native limit for my SDLT 220 drive (110GB Native/220GB compressed) and my backup failed (no space on the tape)

I had turned off software compression (it took a very long time to back up data!), and I set the compression for hardware in the scripts, but it does not seem to have set the drive itself for hardware compression.

I have checked the manuals (etc) and I am not sure how to actually turn on hardware compression on the drive per se.

The first part of the tape log (below) shows that the density code is 0x48 which according to the quantum manual is only 100GB and should be 0x91 for compression (200GB)

Code: [Select]


|------------------------------------------------------------
| Doing level 0 backup of set all using tar
| All sets = full (1 tapes)
| Rewinding & erasing tape...
| Found index key 200611081722, next file is 2
| Deleting record for 200611081722 file 0
| Deleting record for 200611081722 file 1
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Creating index key 200611091033
| Backup set "full" (/)
| Tape #0
|------------------------------------------------------------
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=1, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x48 (Quantum SDLT220).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (81010000):
 EOF ONLINE IM_REP_EN
|------------------------------------------------------------
| File number 1, tape index 200611091033
| Backup of: /
| Date of this level 0 backup: Thu Nov 09 10:33:25 2006
| Date of last level 0 backup: the epoch
|------------------------------------------------------------
| cd "/" && /tmp/collectexit.6385.sh find . -depth -xdev ! -type s ! -regex \
|   "news/articles" ! -regex ".*~"$ -print0 | /tmp/collectexit.6385.sh tar \
|   --create --null --files-from=- --ignore-failed-read --same-permissions \
|   --no-recursion --totals --label "level 0 / Thu Nov 09 10:33:25 2006 \
|   tar+hardware from main" --sparse --atime-preserve -b 64 --file - | \
|   /tmp/collectexit.6385.sh dd ibs=32k obs=32k conv=noerror,sync \
|   of="/dev/nst0"
| [ ! -e /tmp/exitstatus.6385 ]
|----------------------------------

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

20 November update:
As I have had no replies, do I assume NO one else is using hardware compression on a tape drive???

Cheers Douglas