Forum Discussion

arrow_203's avatar
arrow_203
Level 4
15 years ago

Backups Fail When Media Nearly Full

I have several daily full backup jobs running on a Backup Exec 12.5 For Windows Server system.  Each job has its own drive to use, as well as a full 5-day rotation of tapes.  These jobs are configured to append if possible, overwrite if no appendable media is available.

I'm running into a situation whereby, if the media is nearly full, the job will cancel itself, rather than overwrite the media.  Do I have something misconfigured?  The next time the job runs, using the same tape, it will overwrite that tape.  I'm wondering if there's something going on with the pre-scan functionality of the job - I currently have it set for full pre-scan to determine job size.

Anyone have any insight into this one?

Thanks,
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Basics
Tip-How to
  • Ken_Putnam's avatar
    Ken_Putnam
    15 years ago
    I'm running into a situation whereby, if the media is nearly full, the job will cancel itself, rather than overwrite the media.  Do I have something misconfigured?  The next time the job runs, using the same tape, it will overwrite that tape.

    Once a job has started writing to a tape it cannot then go back and overwrite that same tape. This would effectively erase the beginning of the backup

    You just need set up regular Overwrites with intevening Appends, say weekly Overwrites and Daily Appends

    Set the APP and OPP for each media set involved.  Remember that the OPP is reset each time a tape is closed, but the OPP starts when the first job Overwrites a tape, and does not change until the next Overwrite job
  • Ken_Putnam's avatar
    Ken_Putnam
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    I'm running into a situation whereby, if the media is nearly full, the job will cancel itself, rather than overwrite the media.  Do I have something misconfigured?  The next time the job runs, using the same tape, it will overwrite that tape.

    Once a job has started writing to a tape it cannot then go back and overwrite that same tape. This would effectively erase the beginning of the backup

    You just need set up regular Overwrites with intevening Appends, say weekly Overwrites and Daily Appends

    Set the APP and OPP for each media set involved.  Remember that the OPP is reset each time a tape is closed, but the OPP starts when the first job Overwrites a tape, and does not change until the next Overwrite job
  • arrow_203's avatar
    arrow_203
    Level 4
    15 years ago
    To maintain a measure of simplicity to our jobs, I have set all daily jobs to simply overwrite the tape.  We use a two week rotation, and so should have plenty of point-in-time availability throughout the month.

    Thanks for your help!