Were you using hardware or software compression?

"Better" is a matter of taste.  I believe hardware compression is faster
(or less CPU load), but doesn't give you as good a ratio as software can
(hardware typically has a much smaller buffer for storing the data for
compression).

We use only software compression here, the logic being that if we ever
need to recover the data, it likely won't be recovered from the same
physical hardware that it was written on, so we didn't want to run into a
situation where a different unit couldn't decompress the data.  I don't
know if this is a legitimate concern, but we're rather paranoid about our
backups.

Maybe someone should develop lossy compression specifically for tape
backups - I bet you could get like a 10:1 ratio that way!  Since tapes are
so expensive and all :)

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 bradyh at bitstream.net wrote:

> I setup a backup using Arkeia and a Sony Fantom that says it's getting
> compression ratios of 1.2:1 but the same drive using Retrospect on the Macintosh
> says it's getting almost 2:1 ratios.
> 
> Can anyone comment on what they've gotten in the past as far as compression
> ratios?  Also which is better, hardware or software compression?
> 
> Thanks,
> Brady
> 
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