Is BE 11d really overwriting old media on Overwritable Media?

[YosemiteSam]

Is BE 11d really overwriting old media on Overwritable Media? 

We are using BE 11d on Windows Server 2003 and have Overwrite Protection set for an 11 week cycle.  We have used this setup for months without issue.  However, we recently noticed that the media is filling up quicker than expected. 

Yesterday, all of the tapes in my media library were overwritable.  I did not erase or scratch them because I expected this to be unnecessary.  Overwritable means completely overwritable, right?

This morning, all my tapes were FULL and the unit was requesting additional overwritable media.  I did some investigating and discovered that when I right-click on the tape and select Restore Data, some of the data listed as available to be restored is from last night, but there remains a considerable amount of data listed here from 12 to 13 weeks ago. 

This data should have been overwritten last night before the media was listed as FULL. 

Further investigation has led to the same discovery on many of my tapes.  I would expect to see the old data if the tape has not been erased or overwritten, but I do not expect to see a tape listed as FULL with data older than its overwrite protection period.  

Is anyone else experiencing a problem like this?  Please advise.

Thank you,

Sam

[Ken_Putnam]

Are your jobs defined as Overwrite or as Append, else Overwrite?

[YosemiteSam]

Thank you for responding.

The jobs are set to Append, then Overwrite. 

Normally, if the tape only has partial media on it, the tape is listed as appendable, not overwritable, and appending the data works just fine.  If the tape is full, obviously it isn't used.  But if the tape is overwritable, all overwrite protected data on the tape has expired and the tape should be as good as scratch.  I don't see how this is a problem.  This has worked for us for years. 

Thanks again,

Sam

[Ms__Creant]

I am having a similar issue, my B2D folders have backups that are way past overwiteable but new jobs are being created for the jobs. I had to manually delete old files a week or so ago, and the disk is filling back up again. My jobs are set to Append, if not Overwrite and my OPP is from 7 to 13 days - depending on the folder as there are daily, weekly and monthly ones; there are files in there that are months old.

I need HELP!!!!

[Ken_Putnam]

The OPP is reset each time a media (tape volume or BKF file) is closed, so if you always Append, your files will NEVER expire

What is the APP specified for this/these media sets?

[Ms__Creant]

Hmmmmmm......now that you ask.....I checked and the jobs are set to Append, overwrite if no appendable is availalbe and the APP on the B2D folder is None - Infinite Allow Append.

I inherited this environment but I don't think any changes were made to these settings....I certainly could be wrong though; do these settings tell you anything?

[Ken_Putnam]

Well, with Infinite Allow Append, even though Be creates separate BKF files when the old one exceeds the max disk file size specified for the B2D folder), they are treated as one big backup volume,  so as I said, none of the BKF files will ever expire

Normally, one sees an Overwrite once a week or so, and Appends the rest of the week, not all over write jobs. 

or else the APP is set so that every so often a new "family" of BKF files is created.  (when you try to append to a media after the APP has expired, Backup Exec will automatically Overwrite a new media.  App is figured from the time the first Backup on the media is opened)

[Ms__Creant]

I'm sorry....I don't think I understand Ken....I know it's me......they want everything on tapes, in effect appending until the tape fills then overiting available files. The appends work fine but it doesn't seem that the overwites are happening; when the drive went down to 10GB the jobs stopped working until I manually deleted old .bkf files. Maybe our interpretation is incorrect: shouldn't the jobs make new files until the disk space threshold we set is reached and then BE starts using overwriteable files?

Not sure if this info is needed but I should have included it originally:

This is an upgrade from version 10 - does that mean anything? As far as I know this issue is new, since the upgrade actually, so I am hesitant to blame the None - Infinite Allow Append setting. Also, these jobs all come from policies....one for incremental daily jobs, one for weekly full jobs and one to duplicate the full jobs to tape weekly and there are 11 selections lists as there are 11 servers protected.

Sorry again..........(sheepish grin)