Question

Backup Exec Not Reading full Capacity of Media

Backup Exec, Backup servers, Tape backups, Tape drives, Backup

I have not been able to backup in over two weeks because of an issue with Backup Exec not accepting my media... These are 400GB tapes and it is limiting them to 196GB. Is there any reason for this?

As it is, we backup over 250GB a night (and growing). Eventually even the 400GB tapes are not going to be enough. Does anyone have any advice on best practices for backing up?

Thanks for any help and advice you can offer!

***buddy***
first question is, did this tape drive work before with the full capacity? if so then it could be that BE is not using compression. go into your preferences and check the tape drive setup to make sure that BE is allowed to use compression. if the tape is 400 GB compressed then it is 200GB native and that is the maximum that it can use without compression.

if it did not work before and it is a new drive then I would still check that setting. then check with BE tech support to see if that drive is supported by them. if so you might need a firmware update for the drive.

as far as backup practices, we have moved away from Backup Exec to StorServer. BE is a good job but it doesn't compare to StorServer as far as backup schemes. Storserver does one full backup and from then on it only backs up the data that has changed. it backs up to disk natively and then creates disaster recovery tapes from those backups. so normal restores are done from disk, (accidental deletions, etc.), and the only time that you go to tapes is for disaster recovery. it is harder to understand but once you get used to it the product is great.
***/buddy***