Brand New Tape capacity reads as 0, causes failures

[Byron_Molix]

I've been troubleshooting a problem for a while and have exhausted everything I could readily find. The equipment is as follows: Symantec Backup Exec 11d running on a Windows Server 2003 64-bit edition. The machine is a server class machine with approximately 2 GB of free space on the main drive and approximately 90 GB free space on the secondary drive.

We had been seeing "Successful Backup with exceptions", but now all the tapes are at end of life and the backup is always missed or failed. When I inserted a new tape in the drive the backup would begin but still ultimately fail, or say that it was canceled. I have inventoried the new media, I have even attempted a quick erase as the test run results always say that the Media has 0 gb total capacity.

These are new tapes, 4mm 36/72GB made by HP, and as far as listed capacity etc. are identical to the previous tapes that are worn out. There is no option to format the tape, only erase it.

Even though the tape shows up in the Online Media vault after being inventoried, it will not pass the test run. I need to get this back up and going, and I'd like to simply introduce new tapes and have them work. Can someone point me to a possible part of the admin guide or a web article I can use to get back on track?

[Ken_Putnam]

If you load a tape and do an Inventory, does that succeed?

When you label the tape, do you leave it in the scratch media set?  or do you  move it to one of you production media sets?

[Larry_Fine]

Even if the capacity reporting is wrong or broken (for whatever reason), that won't fail the backup job, but it might fail the test run (I never use those).

If you have an old tape that isn't mission critical, you can try moving that tape to "retired" media set, then deleting it.  Then put that tape in the drive and run an inventory on it.  If the capacity is reported correctly, then you know the drive CAN report the correct capacity.

[Byron_Molix]

Ken,

It doesn't succeed the test run after an inventory. It was first part of one of the user-defined sets, and failed. Then after being quick-erased, it was marked as scratch, and failed again. Both of these failures were after the inventory.

Larry,

I have seen the system attempt a backup for several hours and then report a failure before, so I really wanted to see a test run complete before trying again with a real backup. I will try a spare tape that was retired and see if it inventories correctly.

[Larry_Fine]

When a real backup job fails, what is the error message?

[Byron_Molix]

It typically says media removed by user, I believe this is in reference to the source media, not the target media. But the source media is all internal hard drive. None of it should be from across the network. I am now running a real backup to see if it completes or not after correctly inventorying a tape for the full capacity.

[Byron_Molix]

The backup failed with the error "Directory not found", which does not make sense to me in context. My client saw this particular error, so I do not have any specific codes or any idea which directory it failed on at this moment. I will have more info the first of next week.

[#8]

Hello Byron, Could you please tell me is it failing on the system state??? please check the resource order if all the resources are listed under the server and should not be a listed as seprate resource for that server. Step 2) refresh the selection list by unchecking the resources and rechecking them again and then run the job.

[Larry_Fine]

If the backup job is trying to backup a directory that no longer exists, you may see that error.  Look at the selection list for that job and verify it is still correct.  Make sure you use the "view selection details" tab (which shows in text mode, not a GUI tree).