Hi Larry,
Sorry for the delayed replying - I've been away.
Non of my media has barcodes, so this could be the issue. When you say re-importing, is all I'm doing is entering the tapes into the autoloader slots via the front panel on the Dell 124T - I'm not using BackupExec to Import or Export tapes at all. Maybe this is bad practice and something we should be doing? I've just never done it with a single LTO Tape Drive, so didn't think to do it with an autoloader?
If I run the inventory command from the GUI everything works fine. The BEMCMD command I have been using for over two years which works fine is:
"C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\bemcmd.exe" -o103 -a"DELL 1" -s1,2
This inventories slot 1 and 2.
The main problem with this command has been if I set it as a pre job command on the backup job, it doesn't run? I run it as a scheduled Windows task 30 minutes before the scheduled backup job starts then everything works fine. The main problem being is our Full Backup happens on a Friday evening and if we have to change this to another day and someone forgets to modify the Windows Scheduled Task, the job hands waiting for the second tape!
So going on the above, my questions would be:
1) If I barcode all my tapes, should I be able to just load them into the slots on the Autoloader and NOT run any commands - import/export/inventory and the backup should work and find the tapes?
2) If not, then is it correct practice to run the import/export commands when changing the backup tapes daily through the BackupExec GUI?
3) Should I just carry on using my BEMCMD command to achieve everything as it works even though I cannot schedule this to run daily as it seems to hang on inventorying slot 2 when no media is present.
Thanks for all your help and apologies for the essay!
Rob