Swapping removable drives

[beaconsfieldcom]

Regarding https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-125-using-backup-disk-removable-usb-drive...
I've always had problems with backup exec and multiple removable drives.

Can someone explain the correct procedure for adding say 1 daily backup per usb hard drive with 7 drives? Data retention should be able to go back 4 weeks as well.

Strangely my current backup has worked for about 4 weeks and now I'm getting error messages saying the media is offline (which I know it isn't).

[CraigV]

...to get around this for now, you should look at inventorying your B2D media...this should show it as being online again.
BE doesn't have the capability to detect when removable drives have been removed, so this would be a stop-gap.
You can also automate the inventory job to run before the backup job starts...

[pkh]

BE 2010 R2 will be able to automatically detect removable drives that just connected.  They will be automatically be placed online without the need to do an inventory.

[beaconsfieldcom]

They appear online yet I get the message saying they are offline.

[Colin_Weaver]

Bear in mind that if you read our admin guide carefully then you should realize that a removable drive is a cartirdge or platter based media that always has the same drive letter - a USB drive is / was never intended to be a removable backup to disk target because it can change drive letter.

As such you need Backup Exec 2010 R2 - which has enhancements to handle USB drives ending up on different drive letters (as long as you don't unplug it in the middle of a backup anyway) and you need to configure a traditional Backup to Disk Folder (not a removable one) on the drive. With the older versions unplugging the USB drives worked better if you configured the last job of the day to eject the media at the end of the job - because I have not tested the latest update I am not sure if this is still needed.

if you have more then one USB disk (say one for each day) then the B2D devices need configuring in a device pool with the daily job targetting the drive pool so that it will use whatever disk it finds online.

[beaconsfieldcom]

I am aware that drive letters can change (so I only unplug/plug in one drive at a time), I also configured the drives to be part of a single drive pool yet the error still persists before each backup begins.

[beaconsfieldcom]

Is there any solution to this?