I'll address your second question. You have several options.

1. You can invest in a faster tape unit.
2. You can buy a 2 or 3 other tape units and run your backups in 
    "parallel" so that all tapes are being written to simultaneously.
3. Check to see if you have your backup software running optimally.
    We had slow backups for a while, but discovered we were not 
     using our software to full advantage; that is, we did not have 
     the job set up so that it ran as fast as possible. Once we rewrote
     the job, we decreased the length of time it took to complete the
     backups by a third or better.

There may be other options, but these are the ones I recall.

Cynthia Bridges-Fowler
HP3000 System Administrator
North American Salt Company
a division of Compass Minerals Group
[log in to unmask]
http://www.compassminerals.com/    

>>> "Gehan G." <[log in to unmask]> 01/10/03 02:22PM >>>
Hello list friends,
 I've been thinking about our backup tapes recently and I
thought of some questions that I can't seem to find an answer
to..

 First,
  I have a 2 Gig tape which a partial backup was made on it
which takes up only 500MB of the tape.. If I want to back up
another 500MB group on to tape but don't want to waste another
tape on such a small job then.. Is there a way to append to a
tape, add files to a tape with out washing out the previous
backup?

 Second,
  What is the fastest tape drive out there? Presently our
backups take about 4 hours to run. Is there any way to speed
that up? Different tape drive, different type of tape perhaps?
Or is that all dependent on the speed of your proccesser and
such?

 Just curious,
Gehan Gehale



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