> Many drives have an led tally on the front to indicate when the > comnpressor is active. > > And no, amanda will not use it, and in fact cannot because once a lock > on the drive is obtained, its not released until done. Turning it > off is best done via the dip switch or jumper settings programming of > the drive. > > However, be aware that a tape written to with it on, will override the > drives settings until such time as a block 1 write is forced and > flushed to the media with the compression turned off. And drives > even vary in that behaviour from production runto production run. I > now have in service some tapes that were originally compressed, and a > slightly earlier version of the ctl-96 Seagate drive than the one I > started with, and even though the tape labels have been re-written > with compression off, the led is on *until* a real data write starts. > Those tapes didn't show that little foible until I had to replace the > drive with a near identical one.
so if i turn off hardware compression but do not relabel my tapes amanda will still think they are being written to using hardware aswell as software compression until i relabel them? doesn't sound right and i think i'm mistaken but thought i'd better clarify. Tom
