BE 9.0 thinks tape is full? 1

[packdragon]

Monday through Thursday I have an Incremental backup going. The plan is to use one DLT tape for one week, then use a second DLT tape the second week, back to the first tape the third week, and so on. I set overwrite protection to a week, and append time to Infinite.

Yesterday it claimed that it could find no available media to use. So I erased one Incremental tape for a fresh start and the backups ran fine. Now again today I get the same thing! The Append time under the Media Sets tab says None, as if the tapes were full. There is NO WAY that it could have filled the 40/80 DLT4 tape in one evening of incremental data. I checked the job monitor and there is AT MOST 5 GB used. I don't get it! Why is it doing this?

 

[packdragon]

MISTAKE IN THE VERSION NUMBER! I actually have 8.5, sorry. I got it confused with our client's version number.

 

[Qdog]

Check for Soft Write errors in Devices tab, Properties|Statistics tab for the tapedrive. If you have a lot of Soft-Write errors happening that could indicate problems with the write heads. Every time a Soft Write error occurs, the tape drive is fast-forwarding past what it thinks is a bad spot on the tape. You can lose a lot of tape capacity if a lot of those errors are happening during backups. Though I must admit, that would have to be buucoo errors to only get 5Gb on a 40/80 tape. hmmm

Check for Event id'S 7, 9, 11, 15 in System log of Event Viewer on backup server....they indicate hardware problems. Try different tapes.

Good luck!

 

[packdragon]

Great tip Qdog! Soft-write errors are numbering in the hundreds! Is that indicative of a bad tape, dirty heads, or failing drive? I'm hoping it's just a dirty head, which might be the case. The cleaning tape in there is very old and I'm trying to get the office a new one.