On Wednesday 18 October 2006 13:14, Steven Settlemyre wrote: >I have a monthly (full) backup running for about 22 hrs now. Do you >think there is a problem, or is it possible it's just taking a long >time? about 150G of data. > >Steve More than likely, 2 things are afoot here.
1. You don't have a holding disk big enough, so the data is going directly to tape without any buffering, and at the rate that gzip can smunch it. 2. With the above, the drive is probably doing a great job of what we refer to as 'shoe-shining' where the buffer in the drive fills to the point of needing a flush so the drive starts up and dumps the buffer, then does a few zero filled blocks while waiting for more data. It doesn't arrive in time, so the drive stops, and backs up and then re-que's itself to the end of the last block of zerofilled data. Repeat until its done or the drive/tape is worn out. As you can imagine, this also wastes tape and can be a problem all by itself. At that size of a backup, I think I'd check into adding another 200+GB drive just for use as a holding disk. This will not speed up the actual backup a whole lot, but it will more than pay for itself in the reduced wear and tear on the considerably more expensive tape drive and its tape. YMMV of course. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
