Legato indicates that a tape is full when it actually is not.

[CompAdmin2003]

What can cause Legato 6.1 for Windows NT 4.0(connected to a STK 9730 with Quantum DLT7000 tape drives) to indicate that a tape is full when it actually is not.

Thx.

 

[Serbtastic]

If Networker receives any errors while writing data to a tape, it marks the tape as full so that it doesn't continue to write data to a potentially bad tape/drive.

 

[garyphipps]

In the past I have had the same problem.
My set-up was in Digital UNIX with DLTs connected to a SAN via SCSI/Fibre routers.
Tapes were being marked as full with very little actual data on them.

It turned out to be the Fibre card drivers on the server. Once these were updated the problem disappeared.

Gary.

 

[605]

Another potential cause is that the tape drive just needs cleaning.

 

[tvalis]

A tape will also be marked full when the data stored on it reaches the configured capacity of the tape/drive. In device configuration you may have the drive configured for the uncompressed capacity (35GB), in this case it is actually possible for Legato to write a full 70GB to the tape but it will show as being full once it reaches the 35GB mark. I have experienced this with a Quantum SDLT 110/220 on Networker 6.21.

Tim

 

[605]

To my knowledge, this is not true. NW always writes to a tape until it has reached the physical end.
You may see this coincidence only by accident.

The Volume Default Capacity for a tape media is just an estimate - you can actually reach the end before or after
that value, depending on parameters like
- tape length
- compressability
- block size (which you can change as well)

However, NW will stop writing when reaching the Volume Default Capacity for a file device's media. If you want to investigate, please do not forget that this value only
becomes active after you relabeled the media.

 

[sdeb]

I totally agree with 605 (it don't helps but...)

 

[wallace88]

The GUI may say that the tape is at 100% if the default capacity of the device is less that what is being written to the tape. However, NetWorker will continue to use this tape until an i/o error is generated while writing to the tape. This i/o error can occur if:

1) tape reaches its physical end
2) error occurred while writing to that tape

Either way, these two conditions will cause NetWorker to mark the tape as full.

If you are seeing poor tape performance, for example, if NetWorker only writes 10GB before NetWorker marks the tape as full, then try to use something like NTbackup or tar to write directly to the drive and see if you can get better performance without using NetWorker. This will determine whether it is, or is not, a NetWorker issue.

 

[TDun]

605/wallace88 are right. Once you hit the expected capacity, it shows 100% afterwards. It will only show full once it hits a write error.
Look in your deamon.log for an unknown error (probably in the 1100 range?).
Take this number and feed it into net helpmsg
e.g. net helpmsg 1117
This will tell you what the problem was (in the example, 117 gives: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.).