LTO II Tapes in an LTO III Drive

[KEVIN MURRAY]

Some genius is using LTO II tapes in an LTO III drive at a remote site I support. Does using the lower capacity tapes incur a performance hit?

[Lewis Finch]

shouldn't be a problem as they are backward compatible

[BR832414]

The performance will be hit - theoretically. An LTO-II tape in an LTO-III drive will have a maximum performance of (if I remember correctly) 30MB/sec as opposed to the 80MB/sec you would get with LTO-III. I said theoretically, because most people will not achieve the 30MB/sec native speed - especially when you take compression into account.

[Lenny_11]

Ok, how about an LTO4 drive using an LTO3 tape.

Question:
Is the speed limited by the tape? or the drive?

will the backup/restore jobs run at LTO3 "tape" speed or LTO4 "drive" speed based on the above criteria?


Thanks in advance,

Lenny