Duplicate Tapes with BE 2010

[EOS58]

We are upgrading our BE 10d to 2010.  At this time we are also upgrading our tape library from Ultrium 1 to Ultrium 4.  The Ultrium 4 drive will not read Ultrium 1 media, so I would like to copy our archive media to Ultrium 4 tapes.  I understand that it is possible to duplicate media.  But, will BE retain or create a new catalog for the data on the new media?

[pkh]

You are going to have to have both the Ultrium 1 and Ultrium 4 tape drives simultaneously on the media server in order to duplicate the data.  Once you have done that, BE will catalog the new Ultrium 4 tape.  Before you can do the copy, you would need to catalog the old Ultrium 1 tape.

[Colin_Weaver]

Just to clarify - when you run a duplicate job of any kind in Backup Exec - it creates a new set of Catalog files for the new destination - so you will end up with a catalog for the old tapes and a second catalog about the protected data files stored on the new tapes.

[EOS58]

Thanks for the reply.  I have biannual backups going back to 2005.  These backups used anywhere between 2-7 LTO1 tapes over the years.  Since the LTO4 tapes store more data, I should be able to combine these sets?  Since a new catalog is created for the new tapes, will the original date of the backup job be retained?  Thanks.