cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

BE 20.3 Ready, no writable devices

afrancis
Level 2

I have four external 2tb disks via USB 3 on a Win 2008 r2 server. Set it up for weekly full and  subsequent differential backups each day, rotating out drives each Wednesday (disconnect and connect the next drive to one port). One round completed successfully (one backup series per drive, four weeks, then I started getting "Ready, no writable devices available" status once the first device was reconnected for the fifth week.   

The job settings indicate 'keep for 2 weeks' - each job is more than 2 weeks old when reconnected. I can't find any other guidance on why the disk is treated as unavailable or not writable. I checked the jobs and they have all expired (after 2 weeks) on the currently connected device. 

I checked the device properties - there are no options related to making it writable, and I believe this setting comes from the job, not the device. The only setting I can find related to writability is 'keep job for xx xxxx' in the job settings.

Each device shows a pencil with a red line through it which I believe is the symbol for not writable in the storage area. 

I found a setting in Storage Settings "Limit backup exec to read-only operations on a disk-based storage device if it has been detached for: Number of days (set to 14). Could this be the problem? 

I disabled the option and cataloged and inventoried the device, but it stillshows the read cross-out mark over the pencil. 

Any help is appreciated! 

1 REPLY 1

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

When you change the storage setting that you mentioned in your post, it only applies to the future.  Your disk storage has already been marked as read-only.  You need to go to the properties of the disk storage and change it back to read/write.

Disabling the setting is not a good idea.  If you have a back up set on some other disk for archive purposes and you make this disk online after a time, DLM will delete the backup set because it is expired.  This will be done before you can do any restore.  It would be better to set this setting to a reasonable period so that you do not inadvertently delete old backup sets.