Appendable tape wont append

[EZAce]

Now before you say, it can't span to appendable media thats not the issue.

I have a tape that is overwrite protected and append forever. We use this tape to append our incramentals on a daily basis. It works fine and has.

But every so often, after the job has started and qued up, we put the tape in and it will say the media is overwrite protected. We can eject and try again, but it will say keep rejecting the media as overwrite protected.

Now, if i cancel the job and immediatly re-start the same job, it will use the same media it just said was un-appendable and run the job.

Any thoughts?

We are using 12.0 Rev 1364 and LTO 4 tapes.

[Sush--- · Accepted solution]

From the information that you have provided I think this is the working as per the design.

I am sure in the backup job properties you have selected the option "Append to media. Overwrite if no appendable media is available"

So basically this option has two processes:

Process 1) Append to media

Process 2) Overwrite the media only when there is not appendable media

Now when you start the job, it first looks for the appendable media. From your information there is no media at the start. So this means that the first condition becomes returns False as records as there is no appendable media. So now the job tries to see the second condition.

So now the job will start looking for Overwrite Media. At this moment you insert the tape which is appendable but not overwritable. But as the first condition (process 1) is already checked or processed  the job is looking for overwritable media (process 2) and this is the reason why the tape is ejected as its not overwritable.

The best and simple way to resolve this is to insert the tape before the job starts.

I hope that I am clear with my explanation.

Thanks,

-Sush...

(1)

[EZAce]

I am looking to see if this is always true.

Is there a time frame it will wait for option 1 to be found (i.e. look for an appendable media)? Of if there is no tape inserted it will instantly throw a false then look for an overwriteable media.

It seems that sometimes it will take the appedable media after the job has started and pending then sometimes it wont? I am testing this.

- Ron

[Sush---]

As such I dont think there is any kind of time frame for it.

Thanks,

-Sush...