Tapes not appending

[Levittown]

I do monthly backups on tapes in a seperate partition and media set. There should be a way for backup exec to know that a specific tape was just written to about 30 minutes ago, and that there is 100 GB free on it. I can't tell you how many times I have to put in an overwrittable media for a lousy 30 gb - and the rest of the tape is waasted at that point.

[pkh]

There could be a couple of reasons for your problem

1) If you target a different partition from the partition where the intended tape is, BE will not use it.  BE cannot use tapes from another partition

2) If you did not set the AP correctly, then the tape is not appendable at the time the job starts.

[Riyaj_S]

When the job is start with "Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available" configuration it will first look for the appendable media and then if there is no appendable media available it will look for overwritable media. 
If the jobs start on appendable media, it will fill that appendable media first and then it will look for overwritable media to continue. Please note, the job will never be spanned to another appendable media. This is by design

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH62591

[Ken_Putnam]

Are your jobs using the same media set?

Append only works within the same media set.  Different media sets will always write to different tapes

[aleddie1]

I have to create a job schedule to backup 200+ GB (new at the position and found a messy backup strategy). Last night could load 172+ GB to a 300 GB tape (Dell RD 1000), but when reached that figure, stopped asking for an overwritable media. It happened twice and I chose both options:"Append and overwrite if not appendable..." and "Overwrite", but got the same result.

The media was "Removable Disk to Folder1". Any idea will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.