Disk running out of space because of old IMG Folder

[Dominic030]

Hello all.

I am running BackupExec version 21 on a Windows Server 2019.
I am backing up our exchange mail server to a dedicated disk, which is now getting full.

A full backup (backup to disk) is made every Friday, and incremental backups are made Monday through Thursday. This totals about 5 TB of data backed up in a week. These are kept for 5 weeks and can then be deleted by Backup Exec. This creates about 25 TB of data in the 5 weeks. However, the BEData folder occupies 52 TB of disk space instead of 25 TB.
In BackupExec, it is set to allow expired records to be deleted.
In the BackupExec GUI I see in the allocated space also only the said backup sets (in total about 25 TB).
In the file system, however, I see in the BEData directory IMG*** folders with an old modification date, which occupy the remaining space (27 TB). There are between 1 TB and a few GB. Seems to be old backups.

Can I safely delete the old folders in the file system to free the disk space? Is there anything I need to be aware of? Couldn't find a KB article for this.

Thanks a lot!
Dominic

[PJ_Backup]

As you are not using dedupe and the BE Gui contents corresponds to the "newer" 25TB files, in theory yes you could delete these old IMG*** folders, however I believe there are a few things worth checking first.

For instance after 5 weeks are the 6 week-old backups being successfully deleted OK?
If yes, and also if the "old" IMG*** folders are way older than the 5-week period (eg 3-4+ months or from last year etc) then it is probably safe to delete them.

However if the regular deletion process is not happening correctly it would be worth opening a ticket with support to get to the bottom of the problem, otherwise it may just keep happening.

Also to confirm, when you say "In BackupExec, it is set to allow expired records to be deleted." are you referring to the BE setting under the Storage category:
'Allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets'
which by default is not ticked so that the last copy of a backup is always kept. Just checking...

[Dominic030]

Hi,

thanks for your feedback.

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@PJ_Backup wrote:

For instance after 5 weeks are the 6 week-old backups being successfully deleted OK?
If yes, and also if the "old" IMG*** folders are way older than the 5-week period (eg 3-4+ months or from last year etc) then it is probably safe to delete them.

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Yes, in the GUI the 6 weeks old backups are marked as "expired". So when the expiration date is reached, these backups are marked as expired. However, they are only deleted if I manually select the records and let them expire. Then also the occupied disk space of these backups is released again.
The old IMG*** folders are indeed much older (up to 6 months).

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Also to confirm, when you say "In BackupExec, it is set to allow expired records to be deleted." are you referring to the BE setting under the Storage category:
'Allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets'
which by default is not ticked so that the last copy of a backup is always kept. Just checking...

---

Exactly

Furthermore the setting for disk space reserve was not correct. Here were only 10 MB reserve set, which would also explain why the memory ran full. I have now set the reserve to 20 TB. However the IMG***-Folder stiil wont get deleted automatically.

So you also assume that the old IMG*** folders in the file system can be deleted?

Best,

Dominic

[Dominic030]

I just want to mention, that I found a old thread, which seems to be similar to my problem: Solved: BE2012 Old B2D IMG folders taking up space on HDD - VOX (veritas.com)

So I will delete the old IMG folder, for which I can't see any link to existing backups in the BE GUI.

After set the disk space reserve and deletion of the olf IMG-Folder, everything should be back at normal.

Thanks for your help.

[PJ_Backup]

Nice spot (that other thread). Good Luck!