Erase B2D device?

[GA_Dave]

Is there a recurring job I can run according to erase everything on a B2D device?  I have a recurring erase job set up on all the B2D files that were in the device when I created the erase job, but that doesn't erase the IMG files created by database backups.  We've started getting errors that the B2D device is out of free space, and I suspect it's because the database backup hasn't reclaimed the space from the previous week's IMG file yet.

Not erasing the IMG files ahead of time does also add to the verify time, but our backups still run in an acceptable window, so we were content with just erasing the B2D files.

[teiva-boy]

Why erase, when proper media retention (overwrite/append) periods are viable solutions?

(That said, I've done it, nor looked into it)

[GA_Dave]

Because using proper retention periods is not a viable solution; overwriting causes the verification to take too long.  We've worked with multiple Symantec support reps who can't figure out why overwriting data in a B2D folder slows the verification to about half the speed of verifying freshly written data, but the most functional solution was to set up recurring erase jobs.  Unfortunately, those erase jobs will only erase the IMG files the first time they're run, and any scheduled recurrance will only erase the B2D files.  If it were possible to do an erase over the whole B2D device, it would make life a lot easier.

(Granted, having overwriting jobs verify just as fast as freshly written jobs would also make life a lot easier, but I'm not sure how worthwhile another round of working with a support rep would be.)

[teiva-boy]

Overwriting, causes HUGE disk fragmentation issues, unless you are pre-allocating the full BKF size.

This is possibly why verify's are taking a long time?  A copy of diskkeeper goes a long way to improving B2D performance in general.  Windows Defrag wasn't as good, but helped with some sequential writing performance.

The only thing I can think of as I've not tried it in the GUI, is perhaps becmd.exe can be used?  Or worse, deltree the folder manually, and live with the erroneous catalog entries.  I hate this solution, but it's used in last case resorts to solve certain issues...

[GA_Dave]

I'll play around with becmd.exe and see what I can do.  It's definitely not a fragmentation issue, because we were noticing the slow verifies after the very first overwrite of the B2D folder on a newly created disk.  Fragmentation is also the first thing Symantec support had us check, so that always gets ruled out right away.

[Colin_Weaver]

A couple of points

1) BE will attempt to reclaim one at least one IMG at the start of every set that would normally created an IMG - so if you get the overwrite protection of your IMG correct and make sure that your backup jobs start as Overwrite (and not as Append then Overwrite...") then the IMG shoud be removed.

2) A reclaim is a delete and then a new IMG is created for the job - so this process should meet your erase requirement for the IMG side - this is assuming your verify speed thing only seems to affect BKF performance.