Backup Exec 2010 R3 Backup to Disk Clear

[TheD]

I have two backup jobs that run at night.  I am using backup to disk.  I created the backup to disk folder for each and set the Media overwrite protection level to None under options.  One job is to backup files and the other an exchange server.  They run at separate times.  This is a multi-part question regarding the bkp files and deleting them:

1) Why do the jobs create several BKF files ?  I would expect two, one for each job.  Is it creating one per drive backed up?  In the media set it shows several files and the Overwrite Protection Until shows Overwritable and the Appendable Until shows Not appendable (Media full). One file shows as Scratch Media. 

2) What I would prefer is that the Backup to Disk folders are just simply cleared out before the job starts and new files are created each time it runs.  Is this possible?  Could I have a erase job run on the Backup to Disk folder somehow like you can do on a normal tape drive?  Seems silly that there is not a quick or long erase option for backup to disk folders.

[Ken_Putnam]

1)  Several things could cause multiple BKF files

          What is the MAX size?  How much data are you backing up into them?

          What is the MAX sets per BKF set to?  In Backup Exec speak a  backup set is one share, one volume, one database, etc.  if you have this set to "5" and create 6 sets, then backup exec will create two BKFs  

2)  Assuming that you really do NOT want historical data on these folders, from tools\options set overwrite protection to either FULL or PARTIAL, and from tools\options\media management select the option to "Use overwriteable media in the target media set  before scratch media"

Then set the OPP for any media sets involved to something like 4 hours, and make all your jobs Overwrite only.

[Hywel_Mallett]

To expand on Ken's answer, for each Backup-to-disk folder, there is a maximum file size. I think that it's 4GB by default on BE 2010. So when a backup-to-disk job runs, as the file size reaches 4GB, a new file is used (either a new file created, or an overwritable file reused). If you want one backup job to result in a single BKF file, then you need to expand the maximum BKF file size for that backup-to-disk device.

As Ken says, the easiest thing to do to make sure you minimise your disk use and avoid having large numbers of BKF files is to ensure that your backup job overwrites a previous job. You can change the media protection settings as Ken indicated, and lower the Overwrite Protection Period on the media sets you use for your backup jobs. Make sure you understand the implicaitons of this though, as you might not want to overwrite job 1 until job 2 has completed. If you get it wrong enough, you could overwrite your fileserver backup with your Exchange server backup!

[TheD]

The max size was set to 1124GB with 1 backup set max.  So size is not the issue.  One of the jobs was set to overwrite media in the Device and Media section of the properties.  I made the following changes:

I changed the media overwrite protection level to Partial and Use overwritable before scratch the in the Media Managmenet, I created a Media Set that allows overwrite after 1 day and allows appends for 1 day.  I changed the Jobs to use the new media set and changed the settings to Append to Media, Overwrite if no appendable....

[TheD]

Still a ton of bkf files.

[pkh]

What is your setting for this B2D folder parameter, Maximum number of backup sets per backup-to-disk file?  A backup set refers to a resource that is backed up, e.g. C: drive, D: drive, SQL database, system state, etc.  If this parameter is exceeded, then BE will start a new .bkf file, regardless of whether the max. size parameter is reached or not.