After a sleepless night (because it Has To Work Today), I've deconstructed my problems and now know a bit more. Here's the rundown:
I'm backing up an F760 to two DLTs in an ATL P1000 library. The robot is chained with the drives. I'm doing the backups under NetBackup for NDMP running on a Sun E450. I'm using Fast Ethernet, and the E450 and the toaster are on the same switch.
Backing up a number of test paths, I've found that with one which is about 36 GB in the form of about 450,000 files, it takes a couple of hours to finish writing the actual backup images. At this point it needs to write an index which ends up being about 76MB. Now the fun begins. The index data isn't streaming at ALL. It writes a couple dozen blocks and then pauses, and as we progress into the tape the pauses get longer and longer. I'm guessing that the tape is continuously rewinding and seeking to the write point, writing a couple of blocks, and then starting over again. The index takes about 4 hours to write this way.
A) Am I right? B) Could it be a network issue? C) Either way, can I make it stop?
Ultimately, this and its sister F760 will be backing up 190 GB each, so I'd appreciate any help anyone can offer -- thanks!
-=- Benjy Feen benjy@feen.com http://www.feen.com Specialization is for insects. =-=