Good morning, Republic!
I have a little problem with our Backup Exec here at work.
First, let me just say: I understand that even though our tape is written as 200GB/400GB, I will never achieve 2:1 ratio. Also, I know that certain types of data compress better than other.
That being said…
We usually do a full backup every night on our Exchange server. We used to have 1 set of five 200/400GB tapes (Let’s call it SET1). Recently, we changed our other backup server, which used the same tape, with a new one that uses 400/800GB tapes. So we took the 200/400 tapes to make SET2. It worked well for a few months, but now, we’re starting to have incomplete backups. In a nutshell, every tape in SET2 gets full before the end of the backup. However, SET1 is fine.
One thing I did notice is that all the tapes on SET1 all show a compression rate of 1.4:1, whereas the tapes of SET2 show a rate of either 1.1:1 or 1.2:1.
Thinking that it might be the tapes that are getting old, we purchased a new tape and tested it last night. Unfortunately, it did the same thing as those from SET2.
Is there a reason that some tapes always show a compression rate of 1.4:1, and others always show 1.2 or 1.1? I’m thoroughly confused as to why it happens.
BTW, we use BackupExec 12.
Thanks in advance for your help! Have a good day!
Franc Riopel
