B2D Folder are recreated automatically

[harsi]

Hi.

We still try to setup b2d to removable media properly.

The problem we are facing now is that when BE services start all b2d folders you have setup on different removable medias are getting created on the disk which is currently attached. So we are not able to achive what is described in http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH124516 or at least it works as long as you never restart BE.

For example we setup e:\week1, e:\week2, e:\week3 and e:\week4 on different removable disks. This works as desired up to the point where BE is restarted. Then the folders week1, week2, week3, week4 are beeing created on the drive currently beeing attached.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Cheers.

[Ken_Putnam]

Are you running 2010 or 2010R2

You need to be on 2010R2 for this to work correctly

[harsi]

2010R2 + SP1 + latest hotfixes.

Not sure but is it possible that this worked different before applying SP1?

Cheers.

[Ken_Putnam]

Just went and looked at the article you quoted.  It talks about Removeable B2D devices/folders.  R-B2D is designed for devices where the hardware stays connected to the computer but the media is removeable, like Jazz or RDX drives.  USB/Firewire/eSATA should be defined as standard B2D.

[harsi]

Then I quoted the worng article. Sorry for that.

I'm not able to find the right one. It has been quoted by one of the guys here in the forum.

It states that a best practise to use B2D folders with multiple removable hard drives is to create B2D folders (not R-B2D ones) with different names on every harddisk (as alternative to assigning a different drive letter to any of them).

However we found that this only works as long as you did not restart BE.

If BE is restarted and one of the disks it attached all missing B2D folders on that disk which are located on the other disks are recreated on that drive.

IIRC this behavour was different with BE 2010 R2 RTM version.

Cheers.

[harsi]

This is the article I was referring to:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH38839&actp=search&viewlocale=en_U...

[Ken_Putnam]

Never heard of this being reported.

I'll set the support flag for this thread to draw it to the attention of the Symantec folks

[harsi]

Found a workaround so far which is ugly at least but seems to work.

On every removable disk we put files having the name of the B2D folders of the other removabe disk.

For example you have B2D folders week1, week2, week3. Then we put two files on the disk with B2D folder week1 having the names week2 and week3.

This prevents the automatic creation of theses two folders on that disk and BE correctly recognizes those as offline if that disk is attached.

[Colin_Weaver]

Hi all

I have the reproduced internally and am in the process of involving the engineering team to review the issue.

It would help me if I could get confirmation of whether this issue has been seen with Windows 2003 x64 and Windows 2008 x32 or x64 as for various reasons I had to use a 2003 x32 server for the reproduction.

Thanks

Colin

[Steve33]

I am also experiencing this same issue with the same setup.  Running BE 2010 R2 fully updated.  It is installed on Server 2008 R2 Standard.  

[pkh]

32 or 64 bits

[Steve33]

64 bit.  There are no 32 bit versions of 2008 R2.

[Colin_Weaver]

Thanks all, that fact that 2008 R2 X64 is affected gives me enough to at least assume all OS types in between are affected as well.

[Colin_Weaver]

Ok just for information we now have a public document acknowledging the problem and it has been escalated to engineering.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH155949

BTW thanks 'harsi' for identifying the workaround - I have documented this in the article as well.

In theorey there is another workaround that is only useful if you are standing in front of the server duirng the service restart - and that is to eject the USB disk(s) before the service restart and then plug the correct one in once the services are restarted - I haven't documented this in the article because always being available to eject the disk before restarts is not possible.