BE 12.5 - Backups suddenly started asking for overwrightable media

[Matt_Price]

Hi All, 

I'm not very experienced with Backup Exec and our backups have suddenly started failing. We are using Backup Exec 12.5 on Windows 2008 Server with HP Ultrium 2

We do a weekly backup of the whole server to a set of Week tapes for the month(5 tapes in total) which has been working fine. The backup job is set to overwright the tape each week. However this week it just prompted to insert overwrightable media after running the backup for 3hrs, a full successful backup usually takes 6hrs+.

The backup size hasn't changed dramatically so I don't think its a problem fitting the data on the tape as it usually say something along the lines of media full. Its currently at 226GB, but has successful backups as large as 245GB in the past.

I've even tried to erase a tape and re-do the backup and it still fails.

Please help

Many Thanks

Mat

Log Information - This log was taken from a job that requested overwrightable media after 3hrs and I cancelled the job

Drive and media information from media mount: 19/11/2013 17:06:35

Drive Name: HP 1

Media Label: Week 3

Media GUID: {b8935a15-897d-42f5-973c-0fcd222312b2}

Overwrite Protected Until: 01/01/1900 00:00:00

Appendable Until: 31/12/9999 00:00:00

Targeted Media Set Name: Heathfield - Weekly

All Media Used

 Week 3

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Media operation - overwrite.

Compression Type: Hardware [if available, otherwise none]

Encryption Type: None

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AOFO: Started for resource: "C:". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

The snapshot provider used by VSS for volume C: - Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0 (Version 1.0.0.7).

Family Name: "Media created 19/11/2013 17:06:27"

Backup of "C:" as ""

Backup set #1 on storage media #1

Backup set description: "Full Weekly"

Backup Method: Full - Back Up Files - Reset Archive Bit

Backed up 20526 files in 3578 directories.

Processed 10,690,249,786 bytes in  11 minutes and  24 seconds.

Throughput rate: 894 MB/min

Compression Type: Hardware

AOFO: Started for resource: "D:". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

The snapshot provider used by VSS for volume D: - Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0 (Version 1.0.0.7).

Family Name: "Media created 19/11/2013 17:06:27"

Backup of "D:" as ""

Backup set #2 on storage media #1

Backup set description: "Full Weekly"

Backup Method: Full - Back Up Files - Reset Archive Bit

Drive and media mount requested: 19/11/2013 20:17:34

Media mount failed.

User canceled a Physical Volume Library operation.

Backed up 110426 files in 15204 directories.

Processed 215510121405 bytes in  2 hours,  57 minutes, and  23 seconds.

Throughput rate: 1159 MB/min

Compression Type: Hardware

Job ended: 19 November 2013 at 20:19:02

Completed status: Canceled

The job was canceled because the response to a media request alert was Cancel, or because the alert was configured to automatically respond with Cancel, or because the Backup Exec Job Engine service was stopped.

Click an error below to locate it in the job log

Backup- D: Media mount failed.

User canceled a Physical Volume Library operation.

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Check those tapes for the following:

1. See what compression you are getting on them. Compression will affect how much data can fit onto a tape. Not enough compression (which you can't control as it is based on the types of files being backed up!) would see additional tapes being required. If these tapes weren't overwritable, the job would queue or fail, depending on the setup.

2. Check the tapes in BE to see if there are any Hard Write Errors (excessive). If there are, it indicates a physical issue with the tapes and if they are faulty, it can affect how they are written too.

Thanks!

[Matt_Price]

Hi Craig,

Many Thanks for your quick reply. On closer inspection of the media stats I think the tape could be getting full. We are storing more MP4 and JPG data now which I guess won't compress further.

This is the tape info for October tape which completed successfully.

Overwright Protection: Overwritable
Appendable Until: Infinite - Allow Append
Hours in use: 28.7
Data: 207.37GB
Used Capacity 169.7GB of 195.8GB
Available Capacity: 26.07GB
Total Capacity: 195.8GB
Compression Ratio: 1:2:1
Soft write error: 2
Soft read error: 1

Week 3 Tape

Overwright Protection: Overwritable
Appendable Until: Not Appendable(Media Full) --- This is different to the other weekly tapes, they say Infinite - Allow append. 

Hours in use: 285.4
Data: 210.78
Used Capacity 188.1 GB of 195 GB
Available Capacity: 7.70 GB
Total Capacity: 195.8GB
Compression Ratio: 1:1:1
No Errors

I see the compression ratio has dropped and the backup size has grown, so its definately just a full tape issue?

Many Thanks

Matt

[CraigV]

...not a problem. The other option is to simply exclude the media files from the backups, as these will not compress any further.

Thanks!