Question : Problem: VS160 tape drive won't use compression

We use Veritas Backup Exec, a Freecom DLT VS160 tape drive and Quantum VS1 DLT tape to run nightly backups of our single-server Netware 6.5 network.

Generally these run without a problem. However the data on our server has expanded and now sometimes exceeds 80 Gb. When this happens the backup software demands another tape to complete the backup, although it's configured to use compression which should give us 160 Gb capacity.

The settings in the Backup Exec administration console offer hardware compression, software compression, or no compression. We've tried it set to both hardware and software, but neither seems to be effective.

Are we missing something?

Answer : Problem: VS160 tape drive won't use compression

The native capacity is 80GB while the capacity is 160GB on the media so depending on the files you are backing up your mileage may vary. I have had pure SQL backups that compress 3:1 and have had data backups containing *.TIF, *.PDF, etc. that just don't compress at all like .96:1 regardless of hardware or software compression the variable here in the data type you are backing up and if they are a highly compressable file.