How to remove a disk storage and recreate it

[Pascal75]

Hello,

I have a 16To disk storage which is almost full, all backups sets on the disk are duplicated on tapes.

I can delete backups sets on this disk storage

I can't expend the volume in windows because of the number of blocks.

Is it possible to :

step 1 : remove all backup sets in this disk storage

step 2 : stop backup exec

step 3 : copy disk storage folders and files

step 4 : recreate a bigger disk

step 5 : copy disk storage folders and files at the same place

step 6 : restart backup exec

the goal is to recreate le a bigger disk storage without change the disk storage target, because 400 jobs use this disk storage.

[pkh]

Is the bigger disk storage going to be on the same volume as the old disk storage?

[Pascal75]

Yes, I want to add 2 disks of 3To on the RAID 5

[pkh]

I don't understand.  What is 3To? 3TB (terabytes)?  3TB does not give you much additional space.

[PRAVEENCRIC]

"the goal is to recreate le a bigger disk storage without change the disk storage target, because 400 jobs use this disk storage."

You may try this 

configure the test storage for example Disk storage 

Delete the first disk storage --> it will ask to retarget the job --> retarget these job to the test disk stoarge 

If you have16 b2d you may create 16 different network shares b2d folders and retarget the job

once you have increased the size, you may configure the backup to disk and delete the older B2D's and retarget those jobs to new B2D's

[Pascal75]

if he requests to retarget, this is the best method... Y will try it tomorow morning

do you know if I can delete a disk storage if it is not empty ? I see the option "delete" greyed may be it's only because i must to disable it before to delete it.

[Pascal75]

PKH,

sorry for my poor english language, in french language "To" is "tera octet" it's TB in english... it's a mistake

I have a RAID 5 with 7 disks of 3TB and I will recreate it with 9 disks with biggers blocks

[pkh]

In this case you don't have to retarget. I don't have the time to give you the derailed instructions right now. I will do that tomorrow

[Pascal75]

thank you very much

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You can do this

1) Stop all the BE services and put them on manual start so that they do not accidentally start when you reboot the media server later.

2) Assuming the disk storage is on E: drive, copy out the two directories created by BE when you create the disk storage.  BEDATA and one more directory.  Make sure you copy out the entire directory including the directory structure.

3) Delete your existing E: drive and do whatever you need to do to expand it.  Make sure you attach the volume back to the media server as E: drive.  If the disk storage is created with an UNC path, make sure that it is attached back to the media server using the EXACT same UNC path.

4) copy the 2 directories back to the E: drive

5) start all the BE services.  You should be able to access the disk storage as before.

[Pascal75]

Hello Pkh,

I can't copy the disk storage, because I haven't 14TB free on a disk to do the copy.

To do this, I need to delete backup sets on the disk storage to reduce the size of the disk storage, but I don't see in backup exec an option to remove backup sets in a disk storage.

for me, it isn't a problem to remove backup sets on the disk because they are duplicated on tape.

[pkh]

Use Expire.  This will expire the backup sets and DLM will delete them for you.

[Pascal75]

I have expired all backups sets and activated the option "Allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets"

In "details\Backup Sets" I see "No backup sets" but backup exec indicate for this disk storage 1.75TB used

In the explorer the BEData folder size is 1.74TB with 131 files and 7folders, its a lot of .bkf files  and 6 IMG00xxxx folders, 2 of these have .vmdk files in.

the BEControl contain only a BESCF.xml file

is it normal?

are there some option to repair ?

[Pascal75]

I try to catalog it and it recreate the list of backup sets, I will remove them after

[pkh]

It may take time for DLM to delete the backup sets. Leave the disk storage alone for at least 4 hours. If you have expired everything and there are something left, then these can be safely deleted. Make sure that no backup sets are showing in the console before doing clearing the disk storage

[Pascal75]

I have cataloged the disk storage expired all jobs sets and the size is now 8GB.

I apply your method and I have done a test backup.

I think it's ok, I know more after this night

thank you very much