Compression issue on LTO drives

[NarayanKK]

Hello everyone,

This is just an information thread about the compression on the LTO Tape drives.

When the compression fails with following symptoms

Sym1. Backup completes on Native capacity and fails to backup further data
Sym2. Backup fails before reaching the Native capacity
Sym3. Compression fails even after enabling it in Library and Tape Tools

Workaround:-

Sym1:-
1. Check by changing the tapes.
2. Check te files which is been backed up. Apart from Audio files, Video files, CAD drawings, Photoshop files, Pagemaker files, Corel drawings and other Multimedia based files cannot be compressed. These files inflate when the Compression algorithm fails to do its job.

Sym2:-

1. Check the Tapes. Use Genuine HP Cartridges
2. Use a diff backup application (If possible) to test the same. Run Compression test in L&TT to check the ratio and the status
3. Replace the drive if the issue persist

Sym3:-

1. Disable the backup services. And try enabling the compression using L&TT
2. If the above mentioned step fails. Then uninstall the backup application. Reboot the server. Run L&TT and enable compression. Then install the backup application. No need to reboot the server after enabling compression.

These are the most call creaters. And these steps can be followed to fix the issue then and there

Regards,
KK