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Crazy_Excalibur's avatar
Crazy_Excalibur
Level 4
13 years ago

Differences in Catalog and Inventory

I am new to using Backup Exec and I'm trying to understand the differences in catalog and inventory. I inserted new tapes into a tape library and ran an inventory job. This showed all my media and under media description it shows "blank media". When would you run a catalog job? What are they used for? Is it necessary to run when new media is inserted?

Thanks in advance,

 

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  • Ken_Putnam's avatar
    Ken_Putnam
    13 years ago

    Run an inventory to tell BackupExec what media is mounted/present.  You need to do this every time you change tapes  (or import BKF files) to let BackupExec know what media is available for backup or restore jobs

    A catalog job is used to transfer data from a backup media to the \Catalogs folder, so that you can run a restore job/reuse the media.  You need to catalog media if you are past the Truncation period (if you truncate your  catalogs to save disk space) or if you import Tapes or BKF files from another BE system 

  • AmolB's avatar
    AmolB
    Moderator
    13 years ago

    Inventory: Its a utility job, run inventory when you insert a tape in the drive. Inventory job scans the 

    tape and updates the media information in the Backup Exec database.

     

    Catalog: Its a storage operation which is used to generate catalogs of the data which is stored in the 

    media. Before restoring data you need to run a catalog job on the media. Catalogs are responsible to 

    display information in the restore window.

     

    Refer to http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH33576

  • Ken_Putnam's avatar
    Ken_Putnam
    Level 6
    13 years ago

    Run an inventory to tell BackupExec what media is mounted/present.  You need to do this every time you change tapes  (or import BKF files) to let BackupExec know what media is available for backup or restore jobs

    A catalog job is used to transfer data from a backup media to the \Catalogs folder, so that you can run a restore job/reuse the media.  You need to catalog media if you are past the Truncation period (if you truncate your  catalogs to save disk space) or if you import Tapes or BKF files from another BE system 

  • Crazy_Excalibur's avatar
    Crazy_Excalibur
    Level 4
    13 years ago

    Thank you for the link to the doc. That was very helpful, and I also appreciate your response.