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BE 2010 R3 issue: "Please insert overwritable media into the robotic library using the import command"

Edward_Charles
Level 6

I've seen previous posts about this issue/alert before but they were locked.

We get this issue now when using a device pool and 5 drives we manually rotate, one for each weekday.

All I found on this was people who were actually using tapes and robotic libraries etc. but we're not using any of that, just SATA hard drives we change out daily.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated as currently the job stays in the queued status mode for no reason. There is lots of room on the 1TB drive still and we have our media set set to OPP 1 hours, APP 0 hours. The job is completed about 80%.

Thank you

22 REPLIES 22

AmolB
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

When the job begins is it set to "Overwrite" or "Append" ?
 

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Thanks for your reply.

It's set to Overwrite. We simply always need it to overwrite whatever drive is inserted.

BackupWorld
Level 2

I'm facing an strange p'blem angryn some tapes.

Please does someone knows why i'm getting this message?

Erreur: The end marker is unreadable.

Thanx for your help

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

If you really want to always overwrite whatever is on the disk, you need to change the OPP (Overwrite Protection Period) for all the media sets that you use.

It needs to be set low enough that the OPP will have expired before you re-mount the disk, say 5 or 6 hours

But this almost completely bypasses most of the advantages of purchasing Backup Exec in the first place.  With proper management of OPP (Append should never be used for B2D devices IMHO) and a sufficient number of physical drives, you should be able to avoid this problem

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Hey Ken,

Thank for your reply. But as stated our OPP is already set to 1 hour. The have this same media set which we use for all jobs.

I guess we prefer to be in control of what data is where and when it gets overwritten. If the person forgets to change the drive one day we still need it to overwrite it so we always have the lastest backup going offsite which is what you want.

In addition to the offsite backups (using device pool) we run LAN backups to a different B2D folders, one for each day of the week and Saturdays WK1 to WK4 so we can always go back further in time if required. To be honest I find using the OPP very confusing using with media sets.

However we still have this issue as first mentioned in this post. Is that related to IMG folders that failed to overwrite?

Thanks

Regards,

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Just went back and re-read your OP and this caught my eye

The job is completed about 80%.

Sounds like BackupExec thinks the  disk is full when it pops this alert  How big is the external drive and how much data is on a backup?

Also, from Tools\Options\Media Management\  make sure that either FULL or PARTIAL is selected  I've seen some really funky things happen when "None" is selected

Lesta_G
Level 6

Couple of things to try

1) When you plug the disk in, move the recycleable media to the scratch media and see if the problem goes away when the sheduled job runs

2) in the preferences (media management) there is a setting to use scratch media before recyclable. Try swapping that around.

 

I have had queued issues with a tape library (4 scratch and 6 recyclable)  and the only way i found to solve it was to move the recyclable media to scratch media

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Hi Ken,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I guess it "thinks" it's full. Our external hard drives are 500GB or 1TB and the backup is around 370GB. It shouldn't be a space issue.

Also the Media overwrite protection level is set to Full (even though you think it should be None if you want it to be overwritten..). We learned that some time ago to have to set this to Full for the Media Set OPP and APP settings to apply correct?

Thanks

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Thanks for the reply.

We do have it set to overwrite scratch media before recyclable. We can try changing that to see if it helps.

Sorry but where would I see the recycleable media? You mean the media lables that show under the Media Set we used and manually move it to the Scratch Media set? I am not familiar with the different media sets and the concept as we usually never have to use them. We create a custom set for our jobs but don't move around media.

The jobs are running ok at the moment but we still would like to be able to tell why a job is in queued mode, there should be a way of getting the indication of why and what triggered it in the first place.

Thank you.

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Our external hard drives are 500GB or 1TB and the backup is around 370GB. It shouldn't be a space issue.

After connecting and before a  backup starts, how much free space is available on a drive?

 

We learned that some time ago to have to set this to Full for the Media Set OPP and APP settings to apply correct?

Either Full or Partial.  Partial will observe only the expiration date set by BackupExec, while Full will respect the date in the header set by any other software

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

We do have it set to overwrite scratch media before recyclable

With this setting, BackupExec will continue to create new disk files until the volume is full or the reserve has  been met

To reuse existing BKF/IMG files choose the other option "Use Overwriteable media in the target media set before scratch  media"

Then set the OPP to meet your retention needs and/or the size of your disks (Disk job shoule always be overwrite, never append)

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Are you using Removable B2D folders or normal B2D folders?  You should be using the latter, i.e. normal B2D folders.

Lesta_G
Level 6

With a tape library there is a bug that it will not use scratch media OR recycleable media

What Ken Putnam has suggested, (when using a tape library)  I have tried with no success

I have found the only solution is to put the media that are recycleable into the scratch media, then respond OK to the alert

It could be that your USB drives are behaving more like a tape device than a fixed disk device

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Thanks for your reply.

Yes we are using the normal B2D folders for the device pool.

Regards,

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Thanks Ken,

Yes I think we tried both settings but I've changed it again to "Use Overwriteable media in the target media set before scratch  media".

Our OPP is set to 1 hour and Append period is 0 hours.

Regards,

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Thanks Lesta,

OK, yes we're not using tapes anywhere. we just don't see the advantage of them vs using SATA hard drives...

Not sure it would behave that way however.

Regards,

Lesta_G
Level 6

Try my idea

BE treats HD and Tape basically the same , its just a backup device

Put your all HD media that shows as blue and recycleable into the scratch media set , then respond OK to the alert.

I am 99% sure your backup will then run

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Did you check the status of the drives in your device pool to make sure that they are all on-line?  

Also, is your job targeted to that specific device pool or is it targeted to the All Device pool?  It should be the former.

Edward_Charles
Level 6

Thanks Lesta G & pkh for your replies.

When selecting our media set being used in this case and then moving the blue media into the scratch media set we usually get this error: Invalid Physical Volume Library Argument, however some will actually move over. What does this really do? Never had to do this before.

The status of the drives in our device pool are not all online as we only need to have the 1 drive that is actually inserted to appear online (this was another problem we initially had that all appeared online and it created those B2D folders automatically on each drive but found the work around for this issue on this form).
Our job is targeted to the specific device pool we created, not the All Device Pool.

Thank you