Duplicating a backup tape?

[Johnlex]

 Using BE10, with a 10slot, single-drive autoloader. Using LTO3 400/800 tapes.

I'm tasked with creating a backup of over 450gb, and duplicating the data onto a second tape. The initial Backup job is complete.

Anybody gone through this before?

The obvious options within BE seem clear enough. I've created a new job: Duplicating Existing Backup Sets. My source is the initial backup Media. My destination is a second tape that I have in a Media Set for this purpose.

The initial job took 50 hours (millions of files over the LAN). Would you imagine this backup job will take as long? Also, is there a need to have a certain amount of free disk space on the server in order to make the duplicate?

Any suggestions?

Thanks

John

[Marksw · Accepted solution]

 I would imagine that the duplicate job will not take as long. If you are duplicating from tape to tape and you have two tape drives, then you won't need free disk space. The same if you're duplicating from disk to tape. If you're duplicating from tape to tape and you only have one tape drive, you'll need to duplicate to disk first, then to tape.

Mark

[THarry]

 I think the best solution in your case would be to do an original back up to disk, then use two jobs to write to the two tapes.  Weather or not you have 450 Gb available to dedicate is another question.  But with one drive I don't see a 'faster' performance gain doing the same job twice.

Harry