How to check my Cartridge (DDS4) capacity

[Khoo Kay Wooi]

Hi, I'm currently using HP Surestore DAT 40 and Cartridge DDS4. The tape capacity for compression mode should be 40GB. How can I check my cartridge is under compression mode?

The reason why I ask that is because currently I'm using MS 2000 Server's backup to schedule a backup during nighttime. My backup file totally is about 38GB but when I come back to work, a message prompts that asking for new media to continue the backup process. I realize that the first cartridge is about 26GB was backup. I'm sure that I already select the compress mode during I do the schedule job, but don't know why it did not fully backup into one cartridge.

TapeWare is an application that comes with the package. Is this software can do the schedule backup? How to do that? And what is the advantage and disadvantage if compare with MS backup.

Thanks
From Khoo

[CA628575]

The capacity of 40GB assumes compression is enabled and(!) an average compression ratio of the data of 2:1. Now, not all data compress at this exact ratio. Some data (text files, some DB files) compress at much higher ratios while others (pictures, already compressed data) don't compress at all.

Since you were able to get more than the native 20GB of data on the cartridge, it appears to be safe to assume that compression is enabled and used, but the data isn't very compressible thus only allowing a very moderate amount of capacity increase to 26GB.

It does not appear that there is anything wrong with your hardware or software. You should consider changing your backup schedule to allow you to swap tapes, or use 2 drives, or an autoloader which can do the swapping automatically.

[Rothery Harris]

Dear Khoo,

Tapeware backups can be scheduled. Tapeware can provide a 'One button disaster recovery' tape using the HP DDS-4. This is automatically enabled. This feature is not available with MSbackup. You can also purchase upgrades to Tapeware from Yosemite to perform over the network backups.

Rothery