As your retention period setting says, your job will not overwrite your tape which means that it can only append and only use the unused portion of the tape and NEVER the full tape.
If you erase the tape and leave it in the Scratch media set then the job will be able to overwrite the tape. If you move the tape back to this media set after it has been erased, it would be write protected immediately and you cannot overwrite the tape.
I would suggest that you read the section of the Admin Guide dealing with overwrite protection period and append period carefully and set the OPP and AP of this media set to some appropriate setting. Unless you have unlimited amount of tapes, setting OPP to Keep Data Infinitely is a recipe for job failures.
So i erased the tape and madea new media set.
5 Weeks overwrite protection
Append Period: None - Infinite Allow append.
I was doing a full backup for one job and it stopped at 250GB and asked me to insert a new media drive
Even though its a 6TB tapes
To clarify: this is all within ONE backup job? or are you running multiple backup jobs?
If you are only talking about ONE backup job, then it should write until the tape drive reports that the tape cartridge is full. This is irrelevant of the backup append and overwite settings (assuming that the job starts writing bytes in the first place).
Does this tape that has 250GB on it indicate that it is appendable or not, in the BE GUI. If it is not appendable, why not (what reason does it show in the GUI)?
If the GUI reports that the tape is full, then you likely have a hardware issue. Is this a new setup or has it worked previously?
Right now i am testing it on one back up job. Doing a full back up.
This tape has worked previously.
I am looking at the storage, its saying its capacity is at 2.3TB which is odd because this is a 6TB tape.
i so far tried 3 different tapes and the same thing happens
it stops at 250GB saying to insert an overwriteable tape
Whats the difference between Erase and Erase Fresh Tape?
What tape drive are you using? Specifically, what generation of LTO tape drive? What LTO generation of tape cartridges are you using? I am guessing LTO6 tape drive and LTO6 cartridge?
Ignore the compressed capacity (6TB) of the tape cartridge as that is basically marketing stuff for another discussion. But you should always be able to get to the native capacity of the cartridge.
What does BE show as the appendable status for a tape that only has 250GB written to it? does BE show that it is full?
I suspect that you have have a clogged tape drive head, but we need more answers first. This is where I suspect you are heading. https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100008853.html
re: Whats the difference between Erase and Erase Fresh Tape?
I am not familiar with an option in BE called "Erase Fresh Tape". There is a major difference between an "Erase" and a "Long Erase".
