Duplicate tape from tape with a single drive

[Leo_Wan]

Is it possible to run a tape-to-tape duplication job with only single tape drive? The aim is to duplicate a tape for offsite, but I doubt if I need to either have 2 tape drivers or using D2D2T.

[Lou_Buffetta]

Hi Leo,

You will need 2 of the same types of tape drives to do a Tape-to-Tape duplication. The way I see out of the situation is run a Backup-to-Disk once. Then Duplicate it tape twice. Or run the backup to tape as usual, then COPY the backup to a disk folder and COPY it again to a second tape.

[Ken_Putnam]

You cannot "COPY" a tape backup to disk and wouldn't want to COPY a disk backup to tape (as you would lose all the catalog info and need to restore the tape copy, then inventory and catalog before you could get the data back)

In this situation, you would need to DUPLICATE to Disk and then Duplicate back to Tape again 

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 07-23-200709:11 AM

[Leo_Wan]

Thanks...And I think the best way is to first backup the data to a Backup-to-Disk Folder, and then create a duplicate job to duplicate the backup to tape, right? But don't know if this approach can overcome the concern just raised by Ken. Please advise.

[Ken_Putnam]

As long as you only need one tape copy, B2D2T is probably the way to go

You can use policies to kick off the tape job as soon as the disk job completes