This isn't an urgent problem but it is starting to get on my nerves so I'd appreciate any suggestions.

I run Arcserve 6.5 on my main NT server at the office. Just recently, the backups haven't been fitting onto a single tape. I know that it's not because I need bigger tapes - it has successfully fitted almost 30Gb onto a tape before. Now I'm only getting about 27-28Gb (and it's the same kind of data, just less of it).

I'm now finding that, even after deleting some files to make the backup job smaller, I'm coming in each morning and finding that the overnight backup job has got to 99% and is asking for a second tape to be inserted. When I put in a second tape, it only puts on another couple of hundred megabytes to complete the backup job.

I'm not too sure whether the issue is actually with Arcserve or with the tape drive (HP Surestore DDS4 DAT drive) as I've actually got Arcserve compression switched off because it always tells me hardware compression is enabled.

Any ideas?

Just about to go back into the office to switch off the hardware compression setting on the tape drive (which, incidentally, is a Dell Powervault drive, not a Surestore). I didn't know how to disable the hardware compression but I've found some documentation today that identifies jumper pins on the back of the drive that deal with that. So I've got to go back in this evening (after everyone has gone home) so that I can shut the server down and open it up.

Once I've disabled hardware compression, I'll be able to enable Arcserve's software compression - hopefully that will do it properly.

Hmmm, well I've done that now and it is fitting onto one tape but I think that was just a coincidence because I had a bit of a clear-up on the server at the same time to reduce the amount of data being backed up.

Switched on software compression in Arcserve and I'm still getting the message in the backup log saying that software compression couldn't be used because hardware compression is enabled.

So I don't think this is the end of my problem yet