HP VS160 - StorageWorks DLT Tape Drive Troubleshooting Manual page 28

• Data and file types
The type of data being backed up or restored can affect performance. Typically, small files
incur greater overhead in processing and access than large files. Equally, data that is not
compressible will always limit the speed at which the drive can write/read data. You will
achieve no more than native rates with uncompressible data.
Examples of files that compress well are plain text files, spreadsheets; those that compress
poorly are those that are either compressed as part of their format (such as, JPEG
photographic files) or stored as compressed (such as, .ZIP files or .gz/.Z files on Unix
platforms).
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