Disable ANY Compression on LTO 5 Ultrium 3000 external Tape Drive

[gervais519]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone knows if you can disable the data compression inside the HP Ultrium 3000 External Tape Drive (LTO 5)? I am using BRU to backup files and I cannot have any compression. I'm using LTO 4 tapes and the capacity should be only 800GB per tape but on my backup, it is going to over 900 GB per tape. I have any compression disable within BRU and added the file extension to BRU's "Don't Compress" list but according to their website, the tape drive is the one that does the compression.

If anyone knows of a solution to disable any data compression within the tape drive itself or BRU, please let me know as I have tried several different options and I'm still getting the same results.

Thanks!

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

Why you want to disable compression? Have you check that your backup software is not performing Software compression as well? You can disable tape drive's hardware compression by using LTT then Device Configuration.

                       LTT                                               UserGuide see page 107

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[gervais519]

The files that we backup, we do not want any compression. We want them to stay at their current state when going onto the tape. I know I have read that the tape drive won't perform at its top speed and that people say to let the tape drive do its thing when backing up. But, if nothing significant will happen to the files when disabling compression, then there won't be any harm backing it up without compression? If there is, please let me know, otherwise I will see about disabling the compression settings with the link you have provided.

Thank you very much!

[gervais519]

Sorry,

I'm doing this on a MAC and in Terminal. HP has not provided me with a PW for hp_ltt so I cannot change any settings since it is asking me for a password. Any idea on how to get a password or another way around this?

[gervais519]

Nevermind! I think I figured it all out. I will run a test and let you know!

Thanks!

[Curtis Ballard]

You can check and see if any compression is being used with the L&TT tool then pulling a support ticket and checking it to see if compression is enabled.

If you have a drive with really good margin and top quality tapes you can achieve more than the stated capacity without compression being enabled so just going a bit over stated capacity doesn't necessarily mean compression is on.  Quite a bit of margin is built in so that some bad blocks can be skipped and the stated capacity can still be achieved.