Backup Exec 2010
Windows Storage Server 2003 Enterprise
PowerVault 124t, LTO3
We keep one magazine of the library loaded up, tapes start off as Scratch Media, jobs add them to the proper media set. Tapes are rotated off-site once a week on Fridays, and a typical weeks worth of data fills the better part of four tapes.
What's been happening lately is that jobs running on Wednesday night or Thursday morning are ending up writing to the fifth tape in the magazine, instead of the fourth. In each case:
Tapes 1 and 2 are full
Tape 3 has some room - job starts writing here
Tape 4 has some data on it, but is mostly empty
Tape 5 is empty, and in Scratch meda
Tapes 1-4 are all in the same media set. The option to use media in the current set before scratch media is set.
For some reason, when the wed/thu job that starts writing to tape 3 runs out of space on the tape, BE is pulling tape 5 to continue the job instead of tape 4. I've only observed this to happen once per week - every job after that one until the tapes are rotated out will go to tape 4. It's not always the same job - sometimes it's and Exchange job, sometimes is a regular file-based job- it seems random other than the timing.
Can anyone explain why BE insists on writing 1-40GB of data to an empty tape instead of using the 200+GB that are available on another?
