Backup Exec 20, taking longer to backup randomly.

[ajbehzadi]

Backing up 1.5 TB of files to a tape drive.  Backup takes 5 hours, including verification.   It works just fine for days but on other days (random, not the same physical tapes or days of week) it times out after 10 hours.  Changed the job's maximum configured run time to 15 hours from 10 to remedy this.

What could be causing this difference? Is it change or altered state of files being backed up? And if so, how do I fix this?

I would appreciate all the help I can get on this.

[pkh]

One possible reason could be that some files are being used by a job or kept open by someone and thus BE is unable to lock these files for backup.  BE will wait to lock the files and the backup time would increase.

[ajbehzadi]

Thank you for that info.  Is there a way to force it to lock these files so that backup can take place?  Our backups run past 11:00 PM so no one is logged in.  Users might have left something open and not logged out of an application causing this.

Again, Thank you for your help.

[pkh]

No.  The only way is to prevent the files from being locked so that the backup can proceed.  Remind the users to log off before leaving work.

[bebezeek]

Thank you for that info.