New 40 Gb tapes

[jwthomasII]

I have been using 12/24GB tapes but now need to use larger tapes.I purchased 40 GB tapes. Do I have to do any type of re configuration in my back up software or will it automatically adjust to the larger tapes?

[wobbe · Accepted solution]

12/24 so you are probably talking about DDS or DAT tapes, right? You need to make sure that your tape drive is capable of using 20/40 tapes, there is good chance it isn't.

[jwthomasII]

I'm sure you are correct. I found a section that defined my drive as a 12/24 Gb DDS tape drive.
I also realize that my disk drives are 18GB therefore I should not be having problems backing up my server each night.
One last question is since the tapes are 12/24, I'm assuming the 24 would be if the data was compressed. I'm wondering if I have to tell my backup software to now compress the data. I'm using Symantec Back up Exec.

[Víctor Cespón]

The tapes are 12 GB.
Then you can use software or hardware compresion to get more data on each tape. The amount of compressed data depends on the files being backed-up. 24 GB is assuming the files can be compressed 2:1. You may get 12.1 GB or 12 exabytes, depends on the data being backed up.

[wobbe]

I'm not sure if the following applied to dat/dds but if you use hardware compression an replacement drive might not be compatible.