Why do my tapes say that they are "100%", and yet NetWorker keeps writing to them? What's the difference between "100%" and "Full?"

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The value of 100% is based on the default size for that media. If you are writing to a DLT tape, and the default size is 40 GB, NetWorker will report that it is 100% when it has written 40 GB to that tape. However, it will not stop writing to that tape. It will continue writing until it reaches the Physical End Of Tape (PEOT) marker. Once that happens, the tape is marked "Full." If you want to know how much is actually on the tape issue the following: mminfo -q volume=<PUT VOLUME LABEL HERE> -r written

What you are seeing is the following which the above explains: mminfo -q volume=<PUT VOLUME LABEL HERE> -r %used

Bryan Payne Senior Unix Admin NetWorker will also mark a tape as "Full" if it encounters write errors due to faults on the tape. This means that a tape can be marked as full when it is at less than 100% capacity.