Backup Exec 2012 - Backing up to removable drives

Steve:

Back in the release time of 12.x we (Backup Exec) would track removable media by drive letters.  This was a bit inconsistant because what we expected as Drive Z: may not always appear mountable as drive Z:\.  A change was made to the product in the 2010 release that would track the drive GUID as opposed to the logical drive letter assigned by windows.  this is more reliable as each time the drive is mounted we will regonize the GUID and have it avalialbe to us. 

With the 2012 product we have introduced the idea of "Unpluggable fixed disks" like a WD My Book or Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex and “Devices with Removable Storage”, drives where cartridges can be removed from the drive like RDX but the drive is still attached to computer.  Backup Exec 2012 handles unpluggable fixed disks and “devices with removable storage.”  Fixed disks, whether unpluggable or not, are only configurable as Disk Storage (ordinary B2D) not Disk Cartridge (removable B2D).  “Devices with removable storage” are only configurable as Disk Cartridge.

Backup Exec 2012 each configured unpluggable hard disk is tracked uniquely. 

Disk Cartridge devices are not managed by our Data Lifecyle Manament (DLM), this was by design in the BE 2012 product.  They still use the same media set retention that Backup Exec has always used. 

For the most part a Disk Cartridge in BE 2012 is handled like tape. 

If what you are dealing with are drives, For instance SATA Drives.  There are some SATA drives that support removing disks but don’t register with BE as removed/swapped… there is speculation that this could be a hardware/driver issue.  I personally have an eSATA card from Dynex in one of my systems but it doesn’t show external hard disks attached to it in the “Safely Remove” menu in the system tray even though they should.  On the other hand, the internal SATA C: hard disk in my personal computer at home shows up in “Safely Remove” even though you couldn’t possibly remove your C: safely?.  The point is that the adapter hardware and/or driver can affect the OS’s knowledge of the “unpluggability” of hard disks.

However, if the OS knows that the disk has been changed when the “cartridges” are swapped, then BE should know as well.  And if the OS does not know, they have bigger problems that BE; they could get data corruption.  If the disk does show up in “Safely Remove”, then you should be issuing a safe removal though that menu before swapping cartridges or they could possibly be corrupting their disks.

Now that the long winded explination is out of the way, you asked about the possibility of a workaround for your issue.  There is another thread (https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/sata-drives-usb-dock-be2012-whats-best-method-setup)  where Mark Russinovich  (ex Sysinternals/Microsoft guy) provides a utility that may help you out.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/11/08/3463572.aspx.

Work-around:

1. Attach first disk to your server and use DISKPART to find the signature
   SELECT DISK #, where # is the disk number in you system (use Disk Management to find disk number).
   UNIQUEID DISK
   This will give you a 4 byte disk ID e.g. "e9eb3aa5"
2. Now attach the second (or third, etc) and do the same, find the UNIQUE ID, which will show as the same ID as the first. With the same DISKPART tool you can overwrite the ID with a new ID, try incrementing the number with 1 (that is what I did) for each new disk.
   Use the command in DISKPART: UNIQUEID DISK ID=e9eb3aa6, where the ID is the id you choose, this is just an example (see also the article above).
3. After the ID is changed, I deleted all BE folders from that disk (/BEControl and /BEdata), disconnect the USB drive and reconnected it.
4. This time BE Storage does not find the disk in the list and you can Add a new disk.

 

Let me know if this helps,

Joshua