BE2012: Invalid Physical Volume Library Drive Identifier / Unable to acquire device

[Wector]

Hi,

we just imported some older Tapes to do some restore. We build up the catalog of these tapes an just had no problem doing some restore on BE 2010-R3.

Now we upgradet BE to 2012 to do some restores direct to outlook pst files. At the same time we add another librarypartition with older LTO3 drives to restore some very old file data that is on lto2 tapes also.

The Problem is that wen we try to restore some of the LTO3 files, that we restored perfectly on be2010, we get these error Message:

"Invalid Physical Volume Library Drive Identifier"
Final Error Category:  Job Errors
Error Text In Job Log:  "Unable to acquire device. The backup device this operation is attempting to use cannot be found"

It looks like the restore job wana use an drive that isnt ready, but we can not change the drive because in the new dialog of be2012 we cant chose a source device. i think we HAD to coose anoter because of the second librarypartition and the different lto generations. In some other (new, BE2012) restore jobs we have the option to switch the source drive.
 

i hope you have some idear.

regards

Tim

[Sush---]

Hello Tim,

    For now what step you can try is to disable the Tape drive which you do not want to be used. Then run the restore job so that Backup Exec will load the tapes to only the drive which is available so that you will not have any compatibility problem between the tapes getting loaded in wrong tape drive.

    Also if possible use Barcoding in future to avoid this issue completely.

Thanks,

-Sush...

[Wector]

Hi Sush,

i try your hint to disable any devices exept the "LTO3" library we need: Again i get the E0008107 error that is discribt in yout TECH15137

Also, the tapes have barcodes xxxxL2 and xxxxxL5

i wonder that the tapes new tapes (LTO5) is correct spelled in BE2012 with xxxxxL5 but the L2 Tapes have just numbers without the L2 at the end!?

reagards

Tim

[pkh]

It is not clear from your description whether you have 2 tape libraries or 1 tape library.  If you have 1 tape library with two different tape drives and a mixture of LTO tapes.  You would need to set barcode rules to prevent the wrong tapes from being used in the wrong library.  See my article below

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/setting-barcode-rules-be-2012

the L2 Tapes have just numbers without the L2 at the end!?

This is definitely not correct.  You would need to access you library using its Web interface and configure it to report the full 8-characters of the barcode label.

If you are using a single tape library, then you got to look at the format of the barcode label.  It is probably not correct.

[Wector]

Hi pkh,

we have an Quantum i500 Library that holds tree LTO5 Drives in one an now tree LTO3 Drives in anoter partition. From BE2012 it looks like two different librarys.

i changed the digit code to "extended six". The Barcode is now like i expected: xxxxxxL2. Unfortunately Our restore Problem is not solved with the bardoce fix.

We try to copy the tapes to a diskdevice and do the restore from this mediaset (BE2012 ask for the source set in the restore dialoge) that worked!
We test some more restores and i will do some update here in this post.

regards

Tim

[pkh]

Is the partitions in your library done within BE?  If so, you would need to set your barcode rules to enable the correct tapes to be read by the correct drives.  Use my article which I have referenced earlier to do so.

You should set the barcode rules such that

LTO3 tape drives - read LTO1, 2 & 3, write LTO2 & 3

LTO5 tape drives - read LTO3, 4 & 5, write LTO5 & 4

Partitioning to include certain tape drives will not prevent the wrong tapes from being read/written.