Hello,

Has anyone use a LTO Ultrium 2 autoloader tape drive that has deceant backup time? I have one and I can't figure why it take so long just to backup 280GB locally. The tape drive is connect directly to the server, PowerEdge 2950 and all I backup is the C and D drive, about 280g and take 6:30:00 to complete, suppose to take about two hours only. I call HP up and gone through some testing and eventually come down to as, "the device is working fine, not sure why it take so long", by Hp Tech support. Which I know that it's working fine since I can do backup. The setting for my configuration under device configuration is as follow:

Enable compression is checked.
Block size : 64k
Buffer size : 64k
buffer count: 10
High water: 0

Hp said these setting is correct.

I'm using Backup.Exec 10.d on a Windows 2003 server standard edition.

Any advice as to how I can get this process to speed up is greatly appreciated.

How can you explain the things you cannot see?

these devices tend to do 32meg per second with compression and 16meg per second without compression.

That means;
1 hr at 32megs per second you get 115200mb or 115gig per hour
1 hr at 16megs per second you get half that at 57.6gig.

Assuming the optimal number it would take 2.4 hours to backup. Figure the same amount of time for verify. This should put your backup at about 5 hours.

"suppose to take about two hours only"
Can you see now where your calculations are incorrect? Odds are you were not including verify time nor delays caused by open files. Your tape drive should also be on a scsi card all by itself. If connected to a scsi card that also includes the drives you will not reach the max performance level.

Look at the backup logs. This will verify what I am telling you about the time taken for the operations.

Now you want to "speed this up". You could turn off verify but that is NOT ADVISED.

You appear new to backups so I will include some advice most have to get the hard way.
A UNTESTED BACKUP IS NO BACKUP AT ALL.

You must do test restores of each and every backup. You don't have to restore everything but you need to do enough spot check restores to validate you have a good backup.

If you don't do this routinely the day will come when your only hope is a restore from backup, and that is when you will find your untested backup is no good. You will now find yourself standing in the unemployment line looking for your next job.

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

I have found if your backing up alot of small files it takes alot longer. I have a DLT S4 .. it says it will backup 800GB uncompressed (one tape) in 10 hours ... takes 24 uaualy for me.