Catalog Directory

[Jayee]

Hi,

Our server is desperately low on disk space and I noticed the Backup Exec directory is the largest under Program Files.

Most of the space 1.1GB is residing in the "Catalog" directory - can you explain what this directory is for, and what the files contain - most have extensions of .FDD, .U01 and some are .TMP.

Can some housekeeping be done on this directory to free up some space ?

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[SQLBill]

That's what keeps track of your backups. If you don't have a Catalog, you can't restore from tape. The Catalog is BE's reference to what is on a tape. Yes, you can clean it up. I've never had to do it, so check the documentation.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[Jayee]

Hi,

Thanks. If, however, before restoring files from tape, I always do an "Inventory", do I actually need to keep any of these Catalogue files ?

Since writing, I've set up Veritas to do "Database Maintenance" and remove any Catalogues older than 90 days, and am thinking of reducing this further to save space as I can't imagine myself needing to restore files from a tape used more than a month ago (and if I did, I'd probably do an Inventory first anyway).

However, I'm not sure how comes my Catalogue directory now only contains .UO1 files which are dated "modified 14.12.2005 at 9.23am, the date/time last night's backup completed. All the others, even from a few days ago, seem to have disappeared.

Also, how comes a single night's backup catalogue is using 36 individual .UO1 files and taking up a whopping half a gigabyte of disk space ?

Thank you for your help in understanding the Veritas backup software.

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[steveot]

You will need the catalog files for a restore. A inventory will not due. You can delete the .FDD files and .tmp. The only files you should see in that directory are .u01.
In backup exec goto tools- options - catalogs. Move the catalogs to a different drive. If you dont have another drive then you may have to manually delete the older u01 files

 

[Jayee]

Hi,

Thanks for explaining that Inventory is different to Catalog - I did a search on the Veritas knowledgebase and found an article which explained how much commands work and when you need to use them.

I've successfully moved the .U01 files to another directory which has more room (using the instructions in the Veritas knowledgebase) and this has really helped me a lot by giving me the room I needed on the C (System) drive.

I'm glad you've told me I can delete the .FDD and .TMP files as there are quite a few of these in the directory, taking up a lot of room. However, could you tell me what these files are ?

I'm also still a bit puzzled as to how comes the 36 catalog files which used to have individual file dates and times yesterday (so I could tell which one was which) now all have today's date and a time of 9.23am. Can you shed any light on this ?

Because of this (ie. I can't tell which catalogs are old), I was thinking of deleting all the catalogs, collecting all the tapes I may ever want to restore, putting them in the drive and doing a manual Catalog, so I know I don't have any redundant files. Is this a good idea ? or one that will cause me problems ?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[steveot]

IF you ran that purge it may have time stampted them.
If you delete the files that would be Ok, but you would have no restore slections. You would have to inventory and catalog to find whats on that tape.

 

[dmvdmv]

I am currently having this same space issue with catalogs. From what I've read in the online help in BE, it seems that you can "re-catalog" something prior to restoring it.

Does that mean I can get rid of these catalogs? Has anyone ever tried this?

Thanks,
Diane

 

[LawnBoy]

Yes, you can re-catalog a tape by right-clicking the drive it's in and selecting "Catalog". This operation will take quite some time, as BE must now read every byte on that tape...

Usually I'm in a hurry to restore and that's the worst time for me to take 8 hours re-cataloging a tape. Find somewhere to move those catalogs to and keep them. At some point you'll be really glad you did.