Ultrium 920 LTO-3 full tape after 180GB

[martin Huesler]

Hello

We work with an ultrium 920 LTO-3 tape drive and the backup solution from novastor. Now, we have changed the workstation.

For me, it's a bit crazy: After about 180 GB Data writing the software reports full tape. It's the same with different, new HP tapes.

Can someone explain that to me?

Thanks for your support

Kind regards

martin

[thomasr]

Is this a tape in a library, or in a standalone drive?   If in a library, an LTO-2 label would mean it will format at 200GB, in line with what you're saying.   So -- if it's in a library or ever was formatted in a library, I'd check the label.  Labels ending in L2 will make it be seen as an LTO-2 tape.

Check when you format the tape -- does it show it formatted at 400GB, or at 200?

Can you run HP's free Library and Tape Tools, and run tests on a tape to see what L&TT says?   Download from http://www.hp.com/support/tapetools  .

Although it shouldn't happen with new, or freshly formatted tapes, sometimes setting in the backup application will cause tapes to not overwrite when you'd expect them to, so there might actually be two 400GB on a tape, but the first 220GB is from previous jobs, the tape fills up 180GB into this current job, and you don't realize what's going on.   To find out, look at the contents of the tape in your backup application.

Lsstly -- it should show up in a request for a cleaning tape, but it's possible that your tape head is dirty or near end-of-life.   In these cases, there will be large numbers of soft write errors generated; each soft write error skips the just-written (with errors) section of tape and attempts to write the data a second time .  If this happens a lot, it can seriously reduce the amount of data written to a tape.    Try running a cleaning tape, and also check in the backup application and in L&TT for soft write errors.

[martin Huesler]

Thanks Thomasr for your feedback

It's a standalone drive.

I've still use the hp tool to format a older tapes but it's the same problem with new tapes.

I had to insert the cleaning tape already. The process was very short. I do not know if the tape was purified by really.

Is it possible, that I've got a performance problem with the source HDD? It's only a SATA 5400 disc.

Thanks for your support

Martin