Ultrium 2/3 Real Storage size

[Irene Macabio]

Hello,
I'm quite confused on the real storage capacity of an Ultrium 2 or 3 tapes. The specification could say Ultrium-2 could take 400 GB , 800 for ultrium-3. But upon reviewing the device list, they aren't the real sizes. ultrium-3 could show a 1.3 terabyte size while an ultrium-2 shows more than 400 or less than 400 ( by the way, these tapes are recycled every week). Hope someone could spare an answer for i need an estimation of how many tapes our growing data needs in the long run, but having this information, i couldn't guarantee my boss the real utilization of the tapes.. Hope to hear from you kind people.

Thanks!
irene

[Orjan Petersson · Accepted solution]

Native capacity of an Ultrium 2 tape is 200 GB. The 400 GB figure is for an assumed 2:1 compression. If your data can be compressed more than that, you can store more than 400 GB data on the tape. If the data can not be compressed much, e.g. the files are already compressed, you will not be able to store much more than 200 GB on the tape.

For Ultrium 3, the native capacity is 400 GB, and with 2:1 compression the capacity is 800 GB.

The compression is done by the drive firmware.
To verify that the compression is working correctly, you can download and run HP StorageWorks Library and Tape Tools.

[Irene Macabio]

Hello Orjan,

It seems clear to me now..thanks a lot!

irene:)