Forum Discussion

Campbell_IT's avatar
14 years ago
Solved

Proper method for retiring media?

I recently started replacing our 3 year old LTO3 media as we have been getting Hard Write errors on some of the tapes. The new tapes have the same bar code as the old tape for each slot, so as not to confuse the people who change the tapes when I'm not in the office.

Here's what I did:

1. Insert new tape with same bar code

2. Right-click, Scan. The tape shows up in the proper slot, but with the info from the old media

3. Go to Meida tab, find tape & move it to Retired Media

4. Go back to Devices, right-click on the slot & choose Inventory

5. Backup Exec shows the tape as Blank Media, then I label it

6. It appears as a new tape that is Overwriteable and the job runs fine.

2 weeks later, I put the same tape in the porper slot and Scan & it shows up as Retired Media until I run an inventory job on it again.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? How can I get it to the point where I can Scan the slot and have Backup Exec recognize it as the new tape?

  • The tapes are tracked by a GUID which is unique to each tape so that you can relabel the tapes and still the tape statistics will be kept.

    If you assign the same barcode label to your old tapes, I think you would have two entries in your Media, one with the old tape's GUID and one with the new tape's GUID.

    I would suggest that you do this to clear up the mess.

    1) Assign both the old and new tapes to the retired media set.

    2) Right-click on them and select delete to delete them from BE

    3) Scan your library.  You should now have only your new tapes.

    You should always retire your media properly before assigning their labels to new ones.  Use step 1 &2 to do so.

  • Hi,

     

    Either move it into a media set if it already has data on it (the correct media set), or erase the tapes which will return it to the Scratch media set and make it available for whatever job will run next.

     

    Thanks!

  • The tapes are tracked by a GUID which is unique to each tape so that you can relabel the tapes and still the tape statistics will be kept.

    If you assign the same barcode label to your old tapes, I think you would have two entries in your Media, one with the old tape's GUID and one with the new tape's GUID.

    I would suggest that you do this to clear up the mess.

    1) Assign both the old and new tapes to the retired media set.

    2) Right-click on them and select delete to delete them from BE

    3) Scan your library.  You should now have only your new tapes.

    You should always retire your media properly before assigning their labels to new ones.  Use step 1 &2 to do so.

  • Actually, I figured out the proper way to do it. Move the old tape to Retired Media, then delete it. Insert the new tape and Inventory, then label it. Backup Exec will now have only the new tape in it's database.