"Media is overwrite protected" problem

[James_Allen]

I'm the new sysadmin on Win2003 small business box and this is my first job as a sysadmin so if this is a stupid question please forgive me.

We've been running Veritas 10.0 for awhile now with a HP surestore dat24 recorder and everything ran fine for the first couple of months I was on the job. All I had to do was pop the tape in every night before I left and store it in the morning, but starting Monday our tapes have been coming up as overwrite protected when the backup tries to run at night. This is occurring with about 90% of the time, seemingly randomly. We have two weeks worth (10 tapes) so I went through these tapes a couple of times with no problems. I've checked the write tabs on the tapes and they are correct. And veritas is configured to not put any overwrite protection on them when it backs our system up. Under the Media tab, all of the tapes we have are listed as overwriteable. I've updated to sp4 on veritas and updated the firmware on my drive. I'm pretty much clueless as to what to do next. Could this be a failing drive?

[John_Richards_2]

I've had this same problem for a while now and nobody has given a reason why this happens so far. I'm curious myself as to what is doing this, so I will be watching this thread. But....I think I can get you going the same way I get mine working again, for the time being. If you select your media in the media tab and move them to the scratch media group, I believe Backup Exec will gladly use them again. It works for me.

[James_Allen]

Thanks, I'll try that as a work around.

[James_Allen]

does anyone have any idea how to go about fixing this problem?

[Ken_Putnam]

What is the OPP (Overwrite Protection Period) of the media set that the job writes to? Do you reuse the same tapes every week (ie do you have a Monday tape, a Tuesday tape, etc)

If you do have daily tapes and the OPP is set to 7 days, if the job, for whatever reason finishes after midnight, the next week, the tape will still be protected

Try setting the OPP down one day (eg to 6 days) and see what happens

[James_Allen]

I don't think we have OPP turned on. Under options->media management->media overwrite protection level is set to none. And under properties on the media set it says the OPP is none.

[Ken_Putnam]

When you mount the tape tonight, run an inventory. Does the tape info show up in Blue or Black? Blue means the tape in in Overwritable status, Black means the tape is still protected. I'd also recomment setting the Global Overwrite Protection to "Partial" rather than "None"

[James_Allen]

Thanks, I'll try that tonihgt

[John_Richards_2]

Just curious James, did you put the media into the scratch media set and if so, did it use them then?

[Joydeep__Ghosh]

Hi James,

When you will configure any media set, you have to configure the OPP(overwrite protection period) for atleast 1 hour and you cannot proceed further by ignoring that option. I don't know how you have configured the media set without opp. Anyway, the opp will take effect after your tape become full. ie if you are using a 24 GB tape and you have configured the opp for 7 days then, the opp will start after the total 24 GB become full.

So, if you want to overwrite the media then, you should to configure the back job in the following way.

1> In backup job, you have to select "Overwrite The Media" option and not "append to media".

By the above process, the tape will always get overwrite before start the backup and by this it'll never become full and will not fall into OPP.

Or if you want to remove the alert of "overwriting media" then you have to configure the autometic alert option as per the following URL.

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/192055.htm

Go to this URL and then go through the heading "Backup Exec 9.x and 10.0 for Windows Servers" as you are using backup exec 10

[James_Allen]

No, it may have made some difference but I am still having major problems with this. Even when the tapes are labled as scratch media, I am still getting the not overwritable message.

[James_Allen]

It showed up as overwritable (blue) and the back up started fine with it in there, but then when it came time to actually write to the tape the error message came up saying it was overwrite protected although it still showed as overwritable under "Media". Could the overwrite protection be getting changed while the backup is running?

[Ken_Putnam]

How old is the drive? Did it ever work correctly?

perhaps the write-protect mechanism is malfunctioning.

Have you tried running manufacturer diags agaist it?

[James_Allen]

Its an hp surestore drive. Its a couple of years old but this is the first time there have been any problems. And I've never had any problems using the drive outside of Veritas. I ran all the diagnostics HP has on their site on it and it passed every one of them.

[James_Allen]

I've found that when a tape is rejected as overwrite protected on a job it will always come up that way on that job. But if I put in a second tape, that tape will work just fine. But it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the particular tapes. For example, if I put in tape A one night and it is rejected, I can put in tape B and it works just fine. But then the next night I can put in tape B and have it rejected, and then put in tape A and have it work.

[Ken_Putnam]

That is really strange!

I'd almost recommend a complete removal of BackupExec and a clean re-install

See http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/280710.htm to save all your local settings Ber sure to check the Do Not Use If near the top of the TechNote

[Ken_Putnam]

Joydeep -

You need to go back and read the ADAMM manual again

If I write a 1K file to a blank 100GB native tape using a media set with a 28day OPP and an infinite APP, that tape CANNOT be used until the 29th day.

If I take the same tape, and on the 27th day, write another 1K file, then the tape cannot be reused until the 55th day

OPP is calculated from the date/time that the last backupset on the tape is closed.

APP is figured from the date/time that the first backupset on the tape is opened.

[James_Allen]

Ken-

I may have to try that. But like I said, I'm new here so I've never installed it before. Is it a pretty straightforward installation? The kind of thing I could do in a couple hours including backing up my settings and re-applying them?

[James_Allen]

Also,

Is there anyway to keep my jobs, policies, etc?

[Sharvari_Deshmu]

Hello,


1. Please see the technote to copy all the configuration:

How to copy media server configuration to a file and apply the copied media server configuration

http://support.veritas.com/docs/274778



Thanks,

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