Tape issue

[Shahin123]

Hi,

Can someone tell me why this tapes says Not apendeble(end marker unreadebaled). this tape belong to a media set that has infinrt-Do not allow over write.

Thanks

[pkh]

The "end marker unreadable" status is the result of a job failure.  When a job fails, it is unable to close the tape properly by writing the end marker.  Without the end marker, BE does not know where the end of the data is and is unable to append to the tape.  However, the tape can be overwritten if it is not protected.

In your case, you would have to move the tape to the scratch media set so that BE can overwrite the tape.

[Shahin123]

Hi Pkh,

Thanks as always for your replay,

By moving this tape to the streach media set, means the tape is going to be over writen, but I have some data on this tape, can I copy the exsiting data from this problematic tape to other blank tape first and then use this new tape? also can we restore data from this problematic tape? or data canot be resotre from a tape without the end marker.

Thanks

[pkh · Accepted solution]

The last backup that writes to the tape will be bad so there is no point in copying that.  If you are appending to the tape, all the backups other than the last one can be copied or used.

Instead of moving the tape to scatch immediately, you can wait until all the data on the tape has expired and then overwrite it then.   This will save you the trouble of duplcating it.  In the meantime, the tape cannot be appended to.

To duplicate this tape directly to another tape would require 2 tape drives.  If you have only 1 tape drive, then you would have to duplicate the bad tape to disk and then duplicate the disk copy to your other tape.

[Shahin123]

Hi PKH,

Thanks for your replay and sorry for late responce from my side this page was out of use.

when I siad older backup set on this tape, I mean the last backup that went ok on this tape, do you think still we cannot use them? I cannot test the restore becuse there are very large file on this tape.

I think I go ahead with your suggestion and leave this tape untill the data on it expired and then I will format it and try to write data on it.

Thanks

[pkh]

As I said before, you cannot be sure that the last backup that writes to the tape is complete.  You can try to restore from it, but it would probably be incomplete.

For the earlier backups on the tape, they would be o.k.

[Shahin123]

Hi PKH,

Thanks for your replay,

As I said last night  we did use a new tape to back-up our virtual servers (hyper-v), but this morning I can see that the job is failed and the error talking about comunication issue, and I did check the services and findout the same last time the Remote agent was stoped. we have a tape labrery with 16 tapes and last night other jobs the excuted as always without any error. I think the remote services stop when the job of backing up of Hyper-v get excuted. untill now we didnot have this issue at all.

the media server and the hyper-v server are on the same server.

Any idea why the remote agent crech when we try to backup the hyper-v virtual servers.

this is the error:

Job ended: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 at 11:27:56 PM
Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe000ff18 - A communications failure has occurred with a Virtual Machine resource.
Final error category: Resource Errors

For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-65304

[pkh]

This kind of job failures would cause your end marker not readable problem.

[Shahin123]

Hi pkh,

Any idea why the remote agent crech when we try to backup the hyper-v virtual servers (even with a new tape).also when I try to run the live updates first I gt an message that I have to register with symantic this is realy streang becuse we never have to register, but when I see YES after a minut or so I get  error live update 1603

Hper-v job error

Job ended: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 at 11:27:56 PM
Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe000ff18 - A communications failure has occurred with a Virtual Machine resource.
Final error category: Resource Errors

For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-65304

[pkh]

No.  You should close this discussion and post this problem as another discussion.

[gilbert08]

I agree to avaid confusion