HW compression is more efficient and less CPU intense, but if you're drives 
fail you must have extra drives in order to read the tapes as HW compression 
is usually performed by proprietary hardware.

SW compression is hard on you CPU(s), but much more portable. Gzip can be read 
anywhere on most any platform. If you have more than one CPU, you should 
consider SW compression.


On Wednesday 20 November 2002 08:13 am, marc.bigler AT day DOT com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have got here a DDS-3 tape drive which has per default hardware
> compression enabled and was wondering what is the best deal with AMANDA.
> Would you guys suggest hardware compression or should I disable hardware
> compression and have software compression done for example with gzip ?
>
> Regards
> Marc