Any Way to Clear Catalog Tapes?

[hatman]

I've got 2 questions. 1) I'm on a Win2k machine w/ LTO1 tapes/drives, and I'd like to know if I can clear a catalog tape (that was used w/ vault) so I can put it into rotation with the other 'regular' backup tapes since i'm running low and the tape has expired. The bpexpdate command doesn't work.

2) Is there any quick way I can find out how much space is being used on the catalog tape? I've read it's around 3% but I have no way of knowing. It really seems wastefull to put 1 or 2 gigs worth of data onto a 100GB tape. Any Suggestions?

Thanks for your response in advance.

 

[sdeb]

You could erase it manually using the bplabel command (it will physically erase the label and the tape will not be recognized as a Catalog tape anymore).

 

[comtec17]

You will need to run the bpmedia -deassignbyid command to have NetBackup forget that this is a Catalog tape.

 

[PGPhantom]

bpmedialist -m <tape number>
This will give you all the information that you need about a specific tape number.

 

[hatman]

Thanks everyone for your help!