Looking for overwriteable media when there's one available

[patrick_lee]

I have a robotic library with 4 LTO3 drives. I have a problem when a backup job uses all available space on a tape, it doesn't recognize that there is overwriteable media available. It just sits there not knowing there's another tape and doesn't complete the backup job. I usually have to run a quick erase on the available tape and then the backup job resumes. Anyone know why this happens?

[Ken_Putnam]

Are you sure that the are availbale? If you do an ionventory, do the tapes appear in Blue (Overwrita ble) or Black (Protected)

Do you inventory each slot when you change tapes?

Try setting the OPP of the media set down one day (6 days rather than 7 for example)

[patrick_lee]

The backup job uses specific tapes that belong to a media set. The media set for the tapes are as follows:

Overwrite Protection: 1 week
Append Period: 1 week

For example, a week of backups will take about 3 tapes. I swap out the tapes on Mondays and run a quick erase on all 3 tapes. I then move the tapes to the correct media set, so it picks up the media set periods.

Right now, there's a blank tape in one of the slots, but it shows up in black. I can see that overwrite/append period has been set for the tape

[Ken_Putnam]

I swap out the tapes on Mondays and run a quick erase on all 3 tapes. I then move the tapes to the correct media set

That'sthe problem, then. When you move the tapes to the target media set, the take on the properties of that set, including overwrite period

You have two choices -

1) Quick Erase/re-label the tapes and leave them in the scratch media set and let backupexec move them when it writes to them

2) If you re-use the same tapes every two week, change the OPP of the media set to 13 days,. and don't bother quick-erasing them. BackupExec should accept and write to them with no intevention. if every three weeks, 20 days, etc