DLT 8000

[CA879156]

DEAR All,
I use the ARCServerIT 6.5 with the HP DLT8000, but the software can't perform the compression, it ask me that it is impossible to do the compression because the Hardware compress is enable,

May I know that is it possible to disable the hardware compress.

[BR19682]

Hi there.
Use the hardware compression. This will take a lot of load off your cpu.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Alexander is absolutely right. You can check drive, its compression state with HP Library and Tape Tools at http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50128.html
Eugeny

[CA704979]

The previous replies are both entirely correct. Hardware compression does the buffering and compression of the data in the cpu and internals of the tape drive. It is optimized for the particular type of media and drive type. Using software compression not only impacts the CPU on the server being backed up and/or the CPU of the backup server, it also will slow down the backups because the server must compress the data before it is sent to the drive. This will keep the tape drive from getting a constant data stream. The result is that the DLT drive stops the tape movement when not enough data is present. Then it must rewind, reposition, and then start writing again. This decreases head life for the drive very rapidly and will cause a drive failure.

Using the built-in compression will greatly aid your backups under windows. It also will allow the drive to modify write speeds so that it will not do the "shoe shining" of the drive.