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USB DAT 160 - hardware compression not enabled - causing E64 / E1401?

 
Gary J. Porter
Occasional Contributor

USB DAT 160 - hardware compression not enabled - causing E64 / E1401?

This is possibly a follow on from "Subject: DAT160 USB External not performing ANY hardware compression " and has been moved from another Forum.

A new server was setup for a customer at the end of August. Server 2003 R2 on HP Proliant ML350 G6 with a DAT 160 USB internal backup drive. Backups controlled by DPE 4.00-sp1 - 43064. Hardware compression set as on and 160 GB HP DAT Tapes used. All updates done to server software etc

Backups were fine until the 22nd september when SQL 2008 was installed as part of a SOPHOS install. (Out of my hands as I don't control the LEA AV system). This has now been removed and an earlier version of Sopho installed which uses SQL 2005.

On the 23 Sept DPE reported Error 64. After a bit of searching and checking the service I decided to follow the advice and rebuild the database. This appeared to go ok.

Now we are getting E1401 errors.

The tapes are ok and are all in the right place in the backup sets and the backup is configured to auto format and overwrite to overwrite. No tape rotation configured as we need a simple system. The system was working for almost a month with the exact same tapes on a M-T, Wk1-4 and Jan-Dec tape rotation.

Did a bit of checking with the tape tools and it moaned about needing the cleaning tape running. Sorted that. No other issues found.

Used the tape tools to ensure that compression was on and ran the test to ensure it was working. Result was something like 2.23 to 1. I think I also checked that overwrite was enabled.

Noticed when I had a good look at the logs today that the tape was being ejected at about 75G of the backup which was just over 80G in total.

As the backup was a full system backup, warts and all, this suggests that Hardware Compression was not enabled. Checked and its definitely set in the job.Server has the normal school stuff with some AV but not enough to get 1:1 compression.

Before I pull my hair out, please someone tell me where I have gone wrong as I cannot see why this does not work.

All pointers greatfully received.

Many thanks for your help.

Regards

Gary