Backup Exec 2010 R3 B2D USB Drives Issues

[Phone]

I've read the article about using USB external hard drives and it seemed to make sense so we purchase 2010 r3. we want to rotate external usb hard drives and have had a few questions. For instance, sometime after the backup is complete we change the usb hard drive to the next one in sequence and then Backup exec show both the one we just used for backup and the one we connected for the next backup. Mind you only the second usb drive is connected at this time. Both folders show online though. Then at the next backup it figures the one is no longer there. is there a way to avoid this. I've contacted support and been given very different advice to this article.

example

Usb drives should be configured as removeable backup to disk folders

user has to deal with the switching of the usb hard drives. (receive media error when swapping requires user to handle error message)  Is there a way to avoid media error message when swaping drives?

Backup files created is the limit 4GB or can this be larger, if so should it be larger?

 Can anyone tell me the correct method for using USB hard drives for B2D. support says the method used in that article is not supported by symantec. Honestly, support has been very confused and lacking in any good content.

Please if anyone can help it would be appreciate.

thanks 

[AmolB]

For a removable HDD you need to create a RB2D, create only 1 folder for all the HDD.

So when you switch the drives BE will show only 1 folder online and there will be no confusion 

between offline and online folders. 

By delfault the B2D file is set to 4GB, you can set the limit according to the size of the HDD or

according to the amount of data being backed up. So if you are taking a backup of 100GB and if

the B2D file limit is set as 10GB then Backup Exec will create 10 .bkf files each of 10GB size.

Don't set the limit too high else you may face performance issue.

[Ken_Putnam]

Usb drives should be configured as removeable backup to disk folders 

External USB (and eSATA) drives should contain regular B2D fodlers.  R-B2E is designed for devices where the chassis stays connected while the media itself is removeable, like JAZZ or RDX drives

You don't mention your version, but v2010 R3 has greatly enhanced handling of these types of drives. (and is a free upgrade from 2010 or 2010 R2

If you don't want to or can't upgrade, you can schedule a CMD file containing BEMCMD commands to pause all your B2D devices and then Unpause them, just before the job runs usint Windows Task Scheduler, so  Backup Exec will know what devices are online and which are not  (You can only have one  R-B2d device, at the root of a drive, but can have as many standard B2D devices located wherever you wish on the physical drive

[pkh · Accepted solution]

I suppose you are refering to my article

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/how-rotate-external-harddisks

When I wrote my article on rotating USB drives, BE 2010 R3 was still not out, but I expect that my article is still valid under BE2010 R3.

As Ken said, you should be using normal B2D for your USB drives and not removable ones.  This fact has been emphasised many times in this forum by the Symantec people.

When the user remove the USB drive from the media server, he should use the "safely remove" feature of the OS and not just simply unplug it.  The latter may result in an unusable drive if the write cache is not properly written to the disk.  BE will give an informational message to say that the B2D folder on that particular drive is off-line, but the user do not need to respond to that message.  Even if that folder is shown as on-line in BE, it is o.k.  When BE does a backup and check the device pool, it will mark the folder off-line and go on to the next folder in the pool.  All this is done without user intervention.  The important thing in this scheme is to plug in the appropriate drive before the start of the backup job and make sure that it is properly recognised by the OS.  I don't see much user intervention other than plugging and unplugging the drives.

As for bigger .bkf file sizes, normally these are used if you want to pre-allocate them to the max. size so as to minimise the fragmentation of the disk.

My article was written some months ago.  If there is anything wrong with my article, I am sure some Symantec people would have pointed it out.

[Phone]

I appreciate your comments. I'm using R3 to answer that question. The fact is I've communicated four times with Symantec support looking for suggestions and help and each time was told that this method was not supported. I then explained that i was reading this from their web site and they each asked me to provide that article to them. From this point the response has been mixed. one went back and checked with someone and then admitted that it was ok to do this. One other said it would check and never returned my calls. and to this date two other have still insisted that this is NOT a supported method in R3. I only bring this up to show you my confusion about using this method. It does seem to be working fine I just trying to make sure I'm doing this correctly to avoid any problems down the road.

As for the media switch, when the backup is completed we do the remove/eject media option then unplug the drive. At this time we receive a media error message that does require the user to respond. I've checked and do not see a way to avoid the user responding OK to this message. Was hoping there was a way to do that.After plugging the new unit in R3 does now seem to be showing the correct offline/online status for the drives. I would like to avoid the error message but have been unable to find method to do so.

The size of the backup files is still confusing me a little. currently we are backing up around 200GB and I have the size set to 4GB. As stated this creates approx 50 backup files. Should I change this amount to 50GB 100GB 200GB?? This backup is a daily and rotated every 20 days and is the only backup on the drive. Does one option or the other save me time and/or performance.

Thank you in advance for your help with this.

[bjones2]

I am also trying to do the same thing as you (Phone). I was using 2010 R2 initially(I'm on R3 now) ,with 4 usb HDDs for backup. Trying to do backups on mondays and wednesdays, and one on the last friday of the month that goes in a safety deposit box. I have backups working, however the method I was using based off of an article symantec had posted... and seems a little odd. On each disk is a separate folder... one labeled Disk 1, on Drive one,  Disk 2 on drive 2, etc. 

The backups seem to run fine, however I noticed in browsing the drives that is had created folders on each of the disks labeled Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3, and Disk 4. Like all 4 folders now exist on all of my disks, even though I only setup 1 folder on each disk. 

I'm just wondering if It should really be broken up into the different folders.  I am using the B2D folders, not the RB2D option, since it specified it was for removable disk systems like a jazz drive.

It seems like the different folders make since for trying to keep one folder from being overwitten for a week or whatever. I suppose as long as the disks are being swapped propperly, i"m not too concerned about the overwite period. 

I understand what you mean about the media offline errors being annoying, but I'm ok with it as long as I'm sure I'm doing this correct way for what I'm trying to accomplish. 

Any ideas or input would be great.

[pkh]

@bjones2 - This is a known problem

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/issues/backup-disk-folders-offline-usb-disks-are-incorrectly...

you might want to add yourself as a Me Too.

Also, see Colin Weaver's comment on my article where he refer to a workaround

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/how-rotate-external-harddisks

[pkh]

@Phone - I don't think there is a way to avoid the error message because this message is needed for users who unintentionally unplug their drives.

Can you be more specific about tech support's objection to the method described in my article?

As for your .bkf file sizes, you can increase the max. filesize if you want to.  Just change it in the properties of the B2D folder and it will take effect when the next .bkf file is created.

[Colin_Weaver]

Just for completeness I recently tested this with R3 (using a bunch of small pen drives but the theory is the same), it does work in the same way as R2 and the known issue referred to above is still present.

As such I believe the content of the article by pkh is in essence correct.

Also the method of using standard B2D and a device pool is supported by 2010 R2 and above as such 'Phone' would like to use the direct messaging tool within the forums to send me details of the case numbers, I will make sure the support engineers (and their manager) involved with your cases are updated with the training material against the change.

[Phone]

Thank you for your responses.

I would just like to confirm I followed the solution from Mr. Weaver about the folder name problem and it worked great. I'm a little slow to pick up on things, but I will pass along one item about the solution when you create the extra file names do not use an extension. the first time I did this I created files like Backupfolderxxx.txt and this did not work. You want just Backupfolderxxx. This is probably obvious to everyone else but just wanted to pass it along.  Thanks again.

[Colin_Weaver]

I have just added a note about the extensions to the document about the issue - thanks for pointing this out.