BackUp Exec 10d (Dell Ultirum 2 LTO2) Tape full?

[ThePilgrim06]

Afternoon,

We have recently started finding that backups are stopping with a error message that asks for a new tape after around 280Gb. I'm surprised at this thought since we have hardware compression turned on - and I thought the maximum on a LTO 2 tape was 400 compressed?

Am I missing something obvious?

 

[LawnBoy]

LTO2 tapes have 200 GB uncompressed capacity. They will hold 400 GB if EVERY SINGLE FILE has been compressed 2 to 1. Many file types don't compress, .jpg, .zip, .gz to name a few, because they are already compressed.

The percentage of compression you get depends entirely on what files you're backing up. There's no guarantee that an LTO2 will hold more than 200 GB.