How long to expect for a tape erase?

[Marten]

DPM 2007 on Windows 2008 64-bit with HP MSL6060 library with two LTO4 drives.
Approximatly how long should a tape erase take? More than 6 hours???
Thanks
Marten

[david.brunning]

Good question - we have an LTO2 tape drive, and it can take all day to
erase the tapes. I was also wondering if this was normal.

[Jonesy]

Ours tend to take anywhere from 1:34 to 4:54, LTO3 on MSL2024 - 1hr 34mins
seems to crop up a lot though.

Don't know if you noticed but you can select multiple tapes to erase at any
one time, the jobs will be queued until a drive is freed up.

Jonesy.

Post by david.brunning
Good question - we have an LTO2 tape drive, and it can take all day to
erase the tapes. I was also wondering if this was normal.

[david.brunning]

Awesome. How often do you run an erase? I get the impression that
you shouldn't need to once the tape is allocated to a protection
group, but that DPM instead manages the catalog for you, overwriting
data on an expired recovery point. Is that right, or am I missing the
point?

[Peter Jam]

David,
I have been using DPM for almost 2 years and I only tried erasing a tape
once. Apparently it isn't necessary. When a tapes period has expired I just
use "Identify Unkown Tape", takes about 2 minutes and the I right mouse on it
and mark it Free.

Hope that helps

Post by david.brunning
Awesome. How often do you run an erase? I get the impression that
you shouldn't need to once the tape is allocated to a protection
group, but that DPM instead manages the catalog for you, overwriting
data on an expired recovery point. Is that right, or am I missing the
point?

[IT Staff]

by default- erase took a LONG TIME. - no one in forum ever timed for
different LTO.

use Mark as Free - fast and efficient.

But if your tapes are used by other 3rd party software before, you may not
be able to Mark as Free under DPM

Post by Marten
DPM 2007 on Windows 2008 64-bit with HP MSL6060 library with two LTO4 drives.
Approximatly how long should a tape erase take? More than 6 hours???
Thanks
Marten

[Santhosh Sivarajan]

I completely agree with this comment. Default erase process will long time.
5-8 hrs - from my last experience..

Best option is to use "mark as free" option.
--
Santhosh Sivarajan | MCTS, MCSE (W2K3/W2K/NT4), MCSA (W2K3/W2K/MSG), CCNA
Houston, TX
http://blogcastrepository.com/blogs/santhosh/
http://www.sivarajan.com/publications.html

Post by IT Staff
by default- erase took a LONG TIME. - no one in forum ever timed for
different LTO.
use Mark as Free - fast and efficient.
But if your tapes are used by other 3rd party software before, you may not
be able to Mark as Free under DPM

Post by Marten
DPM 2007 on Windows 2008 64-bit with HP MSL6060 library with two LTO4 drives.
Approximatly how long should a tape erase take? More than 6 hours???
Thanks
Marten