Forum Discussion

bellez's avatar
bellez
Level 3
13 years ago

BE catalogs directory is too large

the free space of disk C become more and more smaller in recentery month.  i found catalogs directory(path: C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Catalogs) is about 3GB, maybe a little large. could i deleted  the old .fh and .xml file in the catalogs directory directly?  is there any problem if i delete the old data? 

backup exec version: 2010 r2

  • You may also think about Truncating catalogs after X number of days.

    Refer to http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH7297

  • If you delete the Catalog data, you will loose the ability to see Restore selections (i.e while attempting to perform a restore) untill you recreate the catalogs for that particular media.

    I recommend you move the catalogs folder to a different volume where you have more free space.

    1. Stop all backup Exec services including the SQL service.

    2. Copy and paste the Catalogs folder (with all its contents) to a different volume. (do not attempt to Cut-Paste... do a Copy-Paste)

    3. Start all Backup Exec services

    4. Go to Tools - Options - Catalogs - change the catalogs folder path to the new location.

    5. Restart all Backup Exec services and check if you are able to see your Restore selections. (if you're able to see the restore selections, catalogs are fine)

    6. Delete the Catalogs folder from your C: drive.

  • yes, change to another volume where have more free space is a good solution. 

    we have daily, weekly and monthly backup, we do the same thing every month. and catalog directory have May, June, July, Agu, Sep data, so i think some datas maybe were the same. if i delete the May and June datas will case the issue that you mention?

     

     

  • You may also think about Truncating catalogs after X number of days.

    Refer to http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH7297

  • Deleting files dated May and June will remove the catalogs informaiton from May and June. 

    It is fine if you dont have to do too many restores from your backups dated May/June. But, whenever you have to do a restore from back thn, you will first need to run a Catalog job on the media (so the catalogs are re-created) and thn perform a restore.

    Catalogs are important, but they can be re-created. So you may choose to remove catalogs from certain date range if required. The only thing you need to understand is you will need to re-create the catalog informaiton in order to perfrom a restore from that date.

  • Bear in mind that if you truncate the catalogs, the header for each media is retained along with OPP and APP, but all the detail is lost

    if you ever need to recover data, you will need to perform a catalog of that media before you can start the restore

    If you have a disk with sufficent free space, moving the catalog folder is really a better solution

     

     

  • Also, truncating the catalogs only applies to catalogs which are created after you have set the catalog to truncate.  The existing catalogs will not be truncated and it will not help your situation.