Disabling LTO-2 hardware compression

[Guy Dallaire]

Hi,

Recently added an Overland LoaderXpress LTO 2 tape library to my setup. Inside the loader is an OEM HP Ultrium tape drive. My tape server is a centos 4.2 box (RHEL 4 clone)

I'm using software compression with amanda 2.4.5p1 already.

Problem is, the tape drive in the library always seems to have hardware compression ON. There is no way on the library operator panel to force the compression OFF.

I've heard that LTO2 drives can easily cope with already compressed data (and do not try to re compress it). Is this true ? Otherwise, I fear that trying to compress already compressed data might actually use more tape space and reduce throughput.

I've searched the amanda wiki and di not find anything.

Has anyone devised a way to force hw compression off on a similar setup ?

Thanks