Changing media type of Removable B2D Folder

[Joe_H]

Has anyone played with the media type of Backup-to-Disk folders in BE 12.5 to get around the extra hierarchical level of media that is introduced when using B2D? I'll try to explain:

Given:

• I'm backing up to several external USB drives. Only one of them is connected at any given time.
• Each of my external drives are configured in Windows to use the same drive letter (F).
• I have a Removable Backup-to-Disk Folder in BE ("ExternalHDD") that points to drive F.

When one of my external drives is plugged in, BE recognizes it as a B2D folder nested one level under my "ExternalHDD" B2D folder in the left-hand pane of the devices tab. For example, when my Monday external drive is plugged in, I see the following on the Devices tab (with "ExternalHDD" selected in the left-hand pane):

 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Devices                                | Media Label Media Description
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- MyMediaServer                        | Monday      (Backup-to-Disk Folder)
  - Removable Backup-to-Disk Folders   | 
    - ExternalHDD (points to F:)       | 
      - Monday    (refers to invididual| 
                   external HDD)       | 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Monday drive is (as with each of my other external drives) recognized as media -- that is, it shows up in the right-hand pane when the "ExternalHDD" B2D folder is select in the left -- but nothing is backed up to that media. The media written to for backups are the individual B2D files that appear nested one level down from "Monday" (in the right-hand pane when Monday is selected in the left). As a result, all Restore or Catalog jobs refer to the media labels that were automatically assigned to the B2D files -- BE can't tell me which of my media (Monday drive, Tuesday drive, etc) a particular backup job is on. It doesn't seem to truly consider the nested B2D folder (e.g. Monday) media. I understand from other discussions here that this is more or less by design and that BE 12.5 wasn't really designed to use external drives in a rotation strategy.

I've noticed, however, that when I view the properties of the Monday B2D folder in the example above, it does give me a "Media Properties" dialog, and it seems that I can change the Media Type from FLDR to something else. Can anyone tell me what the DSK, IMG, and various B2D subtypes are designed for and whether I can use one of them (or perhaps even ZIP or one of the tape drive types) to treat each of my USB drives as a single piece of media to which backup jobs are written directly?

[Ken_Putnam]

Up until 2010R2, Symantec explicitly states that physical external drives CANNOT be swapped on the same mount point (drivei letter).  any work around you may come up with is entirely on you if you have any problems

When you use RB2D devices, the backup folder is create at the root. With standard B2D you can create the B2D folder anywhere you desire on the HD.

RB2D  is designed to be used with equipment where the chassis stays connected and the platter/media can be swapped

External USB/FirewWire/eSATA drives should be standard B2D decvices, and there really is no good way (aside from reserving a drive letter for each device - not really a viable option, I agree)

2010R2 introduces a new technology that enables you to mount an external drive to any letter you desire and will recognize and access it

 IMG folders are created  by GRT enabled backups

[Joe_H]

Thanks for the information, Ken. The USB drives had to be set up as RB2D because as standard B2D devices, a "Low Disk Space" alert is triggered when one is disconnected. It's good to know that 2010 officially supports swapping out external drives.

It seem like from BE's perspective, there isn't really any difference between swapping out entire USB drives on the same mount point and swapping out media in an always-connected chassis. The end result is the same: backups are written the same mount point, but the data found there changes (the B2D files and the two *.cfg files). So if I was indeed backing up to, say, several Iomega disks, would BE still associate jobs with automatically named B2D file media instead of the physical media?

[pkh]

The label that you are refering to on the right-hand pane is the name of the B2D folder.  You named them, Monday, Tuesday, etc.  They are just labels as far as BE is concerned.  They could be labeled as anything, e.g. Backup1, Backup2, etc.  These labels are not connected in any way to where they reside.  They could be on a disk drive on the media server or on a SAN.  These folders are containers for the .bkf files that BE writes the data to.

BE can't tell me which of my media (Monday drive, Tuesday drive, etc) a particular backup job is on

This is not true.  From your job log, you can tell what .bkf file the data is written to and from there, you can identify the folder that contains this file.