Backup-to-disk: When does it overwrite?

[Anders_Lund]

Running a backup-to-disk "solution" and the disk is getting more and more full. I can see that many of the backup media files are old and marked as ready to be overwritten, but this dosent happend.

When does Backup Exec start overwriting the old backup files?

I have search the Internet, this forum, the support site, looked in the manual, looked at all(?) the options for BE, media sets, devices, job setup... and I still dont know how to make BE automatically overwrite the old backup files.

What am I missing?

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

Please refer the following technotes.
Title:
Why are multiple .bkf (backup-to-disk) files being created for backup-to-disk jobs?
http://support.veritas.com/docs/248751

Title:
When submitting an existing "overwrite backup to disk" job, an additional "Backup to Disk" file is created.
http://support.veritas.com/docs/244237


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[Anders_Lund]

I have read the links, but I still have the problem... I have some old media files that don't seem to get overwritten, even if they are blue in the media and device tabs in Backup Exec.

I can see that the server does write some of these files - but not all. Should I delete the files that are not overwritten, manually? I'll do it in Backup Exec.

Can it be that theses files are not overwritten, because the belong to a job that I started but rightclicking a job a choose "run now"? I can't see if there is a pattern there, but if a job has failed and there is time to start it again (after I corrected the error) I got to the Job monitor menu, rightclick the job and start it that way.

[Ajit_Kulkarni]

Hello Anders,

Are these bkf files of a old backup ? Do you require that file ?

Kindly update.

Regards



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[Anders_Lund]

Hi

Sorry for the slow response.

Yes, these bkf files are old - some from around the period where the server was installed, some (if not all) of these files should have been overwirtten after 2 weeks.

/Anders

[Anders_Lund]

The problem semes to be the old backups, that haven't been deleted/recycled. I have now, because the free space reached cratical level, manually retired some of the old media files, deletede them i BE and then deletede them in the file system.

Is there a way to do this process faster?

[A_van_der_Boom]

You might try the option 'Overwrite recyclable media contained in the targeted media set before overwriting scratch media' to see if your old bkf files are reused.

Regards
A van der Boom

[Anders_Lund]

Thank you for your response.

I have allready tried different settings - also with that option.
The problem semes to be "some" files, so I have laid out a plan to delete these files, when they get to old. Then hopefully, all future backupjobs will reuse old backup files.

Som (if not all) of the new files are reused. Maybe a servercrash at some point is causing problems with backup files not being "cleared" to be overwritten/reused. Just a guess.