BackUpExec V. 9.1: Compression stopped working

[mikecazz]

Back Up Exec 9.1 -
Drive: Dell PV-110T-DLT-VS80

Recently took over an account and we seem to be having compression issues. 40/80 tapes.
I did not install Service Pack 5 yet since I have reason to believe the program was working fine for years.

We have tried hardware and software and hardware fail to software.
We have also reinstalled the program.
Compression is enabled on the device.

Is there a way to try a test job and then view the finished size on tape? I am unsure if I can view data this way.

I will run the SGMON now and check the logs.

Any info or recommended process would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mikecazz]

On the Dell forums it looks like many people are having the same issue with this line of drives. My BUE SGmon log shows hardware compression being turned off, never on...even if the job is set to hardware comp.

I will approach this from a driver/firmware direction. Dell appears to not have any solutions at this point.

If anyone else has some ideas please let me know.

 

[steveot]

I have seen uninstalling/re-installing BE work

 

[mikecazz]

Yes - we have done one reinstall, but no luck.
Friday I had achance to do more testing. Using a dummy.txt file at 1004 MB I had some strange results.

Backing up with hardware compression on claims to compress at 29.1:1 ratio...but actually writes 1004 MB to tape. This would suggest no compression was actually done.

Using software compression results in .999:1 ratio compression being reported which means no compression right? But...it only writes about 34.5 MB to tape - which seems to mean its really compressing at the 29.1 ratio as reported earlier on the hardware compression side.

All that leads me to believe software compression is working even though the software says it's not.