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peterson_t's avatar
peterson_t
Level 2
17 years ago

Problems with overwriting media

I been having problems with not being able to overwrite media.  I want to create a full backup and keep 3 weeks of data on one tape at one time.  I set the overwrite protection period to 3 weeks and adventually the tape just gets full and runs out of room after 5 weeks.  How can I set it to overwrite any old media after 3 weeks? 
 
My goal is to always keep 2-3 weeks of media at the tape at one time and overwrite older weeks automatically without overwriting the entire tape once it gets full.
 
Can anyone please help???
11.x and Earlier
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec

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  • DY's avatar
    DY
    Level 4
    17 years ago
    The overwrite settings are a function of the media set, which pertain to the tape itself.  You are seeing this because every time a new job appends the tape, the timestamp is reset so the overwrite protection will never run out.  In addition, even if you eliminate the overwrite protection, it will overwrite the whole tape every time the job is run.
     
    As far as I'm aware, there is no way to apply overwrite protection to specific job sets on a single tape.  If your backup jobs are small enough to fit 5 weeks of data on one tape, you may be able to backup to disk and then run duplicate jobs to copy to tape, so you have 1 week of data per tape and 4 weeks on disk.  Since Disk backup media size can be adjusted, you can set the size of each to be approximately what 1 week worth of backup is and then apply overwrite protection on each of those.  That would be my recommendation if you can spare the disk space for B2D jobs.
     
    Hope that helps!
  • peterson_t's avatar
    peterson_t
    Level 2
    17 years ago
    What will happen if I set the append period to 0 weeks and the overwrite period to 3 weeks?  Will this produce the desired affect?
     
    The backup is a full backup and a separate tape for each day (Monday-Saturday).  We use the same media set for each day. 
     
    I don't know how to adjust the media size if all the tapes are the same. 
  • Ken_Putnam's avatar
    Ken_Putnam
    Level 6
    17 years ago
    My goal is to always keep 2-3 weeks of media at the tape at one time and overwrite older weeks automatically without overwriting the entire tape once it gets full.
     
     
    If you are saying what I think you are saying, you can't do it.  Once a tape fills up, all you can do is Overwrite, which effecivly does a quick erase, and any data on the tape is no longer retrievable  (remember that tape is sequential access not random access)
     
     
    If you want three weeks of data,  if the complete week will fit in on one tape,  you'll need three tapes, one for each week, and two jobs,  An Overwrite on Monday, and an Append the rest of the week
     
    I take that back
     
    You could have one job, defined as "Append, else Overwrite", and the media set APP set to 5 days, OPP to 13 days.  You'll still need three tapes though

    Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 08-17-200701:17 PM