>Don't you just love TSM. I had hoped to speed up the offsite copy but it
>appears the two processes aren't aware of each other, one requiring the same
>tape the other is copying offsite.

When contemplating what is happening in the processing of stgpool tapes,
always have in mind that files - particularly large ones - often span
volumes, and in proceeding to copy files from a given tape, a Backup Stgpool
may need to get the beginning of a file from the end of a tape that is
otherwise in use. Indeed, the Backup Stgpool that had been running for a
while on your system showed:  Current Physical File (bytes): 1,442,967,798
where such file sizes portends spanning.

>Yip, in this particular case i did maxpr=3 (have 12 drives, sometimes all are
>free). This pool consists of many small files and is taking ages to copy.

You're using LTO, which in general is not very good at handling small files.
Redbook "IBM TotalStorage Tape Selection and Differentiation Guide" notes
"...LTO ... is five times slower on reacting to start and stop [than 3590]".

   Richard Sims, http://people.bu.edu/rbs