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)
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.