Change NEW tape drive - From HP DAT 160 to HP DAT 320 on BE 2010 R3

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Hi guys, looking for some advice.

I have today purchased a HP DAT 320GB External USB Tape drive along with 10 DAT 320GB Data Catridges.

At the moment we're running BE 2010 R3 on Windows Server 2008 x64, and we run a combination of D2D daily backups and daily tape backups. The tape drive at the moment is a HP DAT 160 External USB. For obvious reasons, I needed more compressed data storage, hence the purchase of this new one.

I'm looking for best practice to get BE to recognise this new USB external DAT 320 drive? Would you recommend adding the new tape drive as a new device and then amending the current tape jobs from DAT 160 to DAT 320 for example?

Or a clean start for job selection, device name and also new job setup?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated to migrate from my DAT 160 to DAT 320.

Thanks.

[CraigV]

Hi,

You'd do the following:

1. Add the drive to the server, and rescan for new devices within Windows Device Manager. Make sure it is detected correctly. You can remove the old drive before doing so.

2. Restart the BE services so that it detects the new unit. Run the Device configuration wizard, and select the option to install the Symantec drivers. Once done, the drive shows up under Devices within BE.

3. Open up your jobs and then retarget them to the new drive. No need to create anything new as that is unnecessary work!

Thanks!

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Thanks a lot for your swift reply. Sounds simple enough.

I'll give that a shot and let y ou know if I have problems.

Thanks again - much appreciate :)

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Also just one quick thing. I have bought 10 320GB data cartridges. Whats the best way on BE to label the media?

I want to do fortnightly backups from Monday 01 - Friday 02 and an additional monthly backup label.

That's how it's currently setup with the DAT 160 media so want to keep it consistant with these new 320 data cartridges?

Thanks.

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

That's up to you. You can bring in that media and call it Monday 01 New for instance, or label them with the barcode names if you have barcodes.

Don't rename them to what you currently have...you might mess up the current tapes.

[Mo_Chowdhury]

OK thanks for this.

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Thanks for all your help on this.

[CraigV]

...? You'd ideally mark the thread that helped you, or if you managed to find the solution yourself, then put those details in. Otherwise nobody really knows the exact way to resolve this for future reference.