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Reclaiming de-duplication space manually

BillClark22
Level 4

Running all my backup jobs to a de-dupliation disk with a retention period of 5 weeks.  When I look at the details, I see lots of expired backup sets that aren't being automatically cleared up by the system, quite a few that are past the 5 week retention period.  The backup sets that are listed should have all been duplicated by a later job so they aren't the only copy.  My question is can I go in and right-click on each expired backup set, select Expire and reclaim the disk space listed under the size column?  Or does this mess with any catalogs that are maintained by the de-duplication process?  Have several TB that I would like to recover that aren't being released.  Thanks.

PS:  I do not have "allow Backup Exec to delete all expired backup sets" checked.

Deduplication.JPG

6 REPLIES 6

CraigV
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pkh
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What version of BE are you running? If you are on BE 2014, make sure you are on SP2 which solves the problem of expired backup sets not being deleted.

Since you are using a dedup folder, deleting backup sets does not necessarily mean that you will get back the space occupied by these backup sets. See my article below for an explanation

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/deduplication-simplified-part-2-restore

BillClark22
Level 4

I am using Backup Exec 2014, V-Ray Edition.  The server version is 14.1 Rev. 1786, which I believe is SP2 is it not?  I checked LiveUpdate and there are no current updates for me to pull down.

pkh
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To check, click on the BE button then click on Installation and Licencing and Installed Updates

BillClark22
Level 4

Yes it is SP2.

pkh
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Check whether there are any backup sets dependent on the expired backup sets.  This will cause them not to be deleted.  If there are no dependencies and they are expired, then you should log a support case with Symantec for them to take a look at the problem.