Whats the deal with Overwrite protection?!?!

[ame540]

I continually have problems with overwriting media.

I have a full backup to tape that i do every friday. We rotate tapes, so im not worried about overwriting anything. The backup job parameters say that when the job starts to "Overwrite media". The Media settings are:

Overwrite protection period: NONE
Append Media: None - Infinate Allow Append.

So why does my backup job stop at the end and say:

Media 'AIT000004' is overwrite protected.
The media in drive 'SONY1' is currently allocated and is not available for overwrite operations.

The tape is then ejected and another message shows up saying:
Please insert overwriteable media into the drive.

Overwritable media includes scratch, blank, and recyclable media.

So this media AIT000004, has been moved to scratch media, but it doesnt seem to make a difference.

 

[SQLBill]

What is the size of the tape and how much data are you saving to it? It could be the tape is getting full.

Another thing is this:

Append Media: None - Infinate Allow Append.

I believe that will cause it to append before it overwrites.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[ame540]

The tapes will easily do 80 GB compressed. Right now this job is stopping at 50 GB and asking about the overwrite. I have done jobs in the past to 55 GB ok, so it doesn't appear to be a tape space issue.

If i understand correctly you are saying that it is trying to append media to the tape before overwriting, possibly putting too much data on the tape, in addition to what was already on it before. How can i tell it to just overwrite the data on the tape when it starts? I thought i already did this in my Job properties > Destination > Device and Media - "when this job begins - Overwrite media"

I'm completly lost at this point. Veritas has made what should be a simple task, extremely confusing and illogical. Any other tips would really help me out right about now.

 

[steveot]

Tape is runnig out of space. If you setup the job to overwrite then in the job log at the beginning it will tell you to overwrite. I assume the tapes are 40/80 tapes. 80gig is pure text compression. COmpression is working if you getting past the 40gig mark. Possible that the data you backing up is already compressed. Insert a new tape and let the job finish and see what happens.

Contact the hardware vendor to ensure the compression is working properly. Make sure in the job setup you using hardware compression and not software.

Update to latest firmware on the drive and veritas drivers.

 

[ame540]

I will reconfigure the backup job to use Hardware compression only.

Would it help at all to do a long erase on the tape in question and then retry the backup job?