MultiTape Backup

[dragonflygirl]

Is there any way to specify which tape the second tape will back up to? I have two set up in the scratch pool with the name of Friday, but the second tape doesn't ever choose the second tape named Friday to continue on. I have the job set to overwrite same media name in the additional media field, but it doesn't ever do it. Any ideas? i am using ArcServe 9.0

 

[davidmichel]

Background info:
When spanning tapes all tapes have the same name and ID, seq. # and serial # will be different.

So for example:
tape name: Friday, ID: e45t, seq: 1, serial # 0000001
tape name: Friday, ID: e45t, seq: 2, serial # 0000002

Now here is the thing there is no way to format a tape as a seq. # 2 tape. So if two tapes are formated with the name Friday they will have the same name, different IDs, and both be seq. #1. In that case the job can not use the second tape for the span.

Solution: do a quick erase plus on the second tape and the job will automatically use it.

 

[dragonflygirl]

Thanks for the information. With that in mind, here is the next part of problem. I have 7 total tapes. I use and remove/replace the daily tapes. That accounts for four of them, then there are two Friday tapes and one that is blank media. The backup always reformats one of the daily tapes rather than going to the blank media. It seems like it should pick up the blank media before one that has been used?

 

[davidmichel]

The picking order is:
same tape
blank tape
any tape (this depends on type of job and settings)

So for example, from week to week Monday job will always use the Monday tape first.

If you do not want the job to re-use the Monday tape the next week then either pull it from the library or modify the Media Pool to increase the # of days &/or tapes.

 

[dragonflygirl]

I'm sorry for the confusion, but I was still referring to the multi-tape Friday backup. The second tape always chooses one of the named tapes rather than the tape that is "blank media". The job is set to overwrite same media name or blank media for the additional media. I do not have it set to choose "any media". I hope this is more clear. I just want it to choose a blank tape for the second one, not one that I have set up and named for the days of the week.

 

[davidmichel]

what type of job? custom, rotation or gfs

 

[dragonflygirl]

It is a rotation, <5 day weekly differential backup, Full backup on friday.>

 

[dragonflygirl]

the same thing happened at the end of last week. I had two tapes that had been erased, so they showed up as Blank. However, when the Friday backup needed a second media, it took the Monday tape, reformatted it and used it. How can I get it to go to the blank media?

 

[davidmichel]

Rotation jobs use a media pool. Jobs that use a media pool will take any tape that is in the scratch set before taking another tape.

The extra tape can be added to the media pool (right click on it), and if blank the tape will have to be formatted first before it can be added to the pool.

Another thing to consider is that the # of days &/or # of tapes required before a tape is moved from the save set to the scratch set might need to be modified so that tapes will stay in the save set until you want them to be overwritten.

For example if the min. # of day is 6 a backup tape from Monday would not move to the scratch set until after 6 days.

 

[dragonflygirl]

Thanks for all of your help. I did format and name the tape, made sure it was in the media pool and this is the tape that the backup took for the additional media. Thanks again!