unassigning media to use as scratch

[Arvin197]

Hi everyone,

My problem is that i have tapes that i want to use that is assigned therefore i cant change to scratch in order to use.How do i unassign the tapes? Is there a script that i can run? Netbackup 7.0.

thanks in advance,

[Amit_Karia]

As long as there are images on tape it will not be un-assigned.. forcefully unassigning tapes is not good practice , it might hamper emm db

[Marianne]

Tapes are assigned because there are valid backup images on them. Retention levels are normally a business requirement, and trust me, users KNOW for how long there backups are supposed to be kept. They have a habit of requesting a restore a couple of hours before the backups are due to expire naturally.

Run 'images on media' report, find out from system owners if these backup images are still required, and ONLY when you are 100% sure that the backups are no longer required, expire all images on tape:

bpexpdate -d 0 -m <media-id>

This will expire media, unassign the tape and return it to scratch (provided it came from scratch).

[Stumpr2]

Check the logfiles to see if Netbackup is trying to unassign a tape and failing with an error. It happens.

Check for FROZEN tapes that no longer have valid images on them. FROZEN tapes are always assigned.

[Arvin197]

thanks for the advice guys,bpexpdate -d 0 -m <media-id> works well,luckily i didnt have to use it because my new stock of tapes arrived on time.