Full Backups to tape

[Dr.Gerry]

I'm struggling to get my head around full backups to tape (I know......it's probably not really so complicated that anyone should struggle with it, but there you go.....). We are taking daily incrementals and on weekends I'd like to create a synthetic full backup and copy that to tape. To achieve this, I have selected the 'create active full backups periodically' on all of my backup to disk jobs. I then have the last job in my backup job chain start a backup to tape job that looks for new full backups and copies them to tape.

It's a bit hard to explain here what is happening, but I either get 2 copies of full backups on tape, or only 3 or four of my backups get copied to tape. I'm obviously doing something wrong. So can someone tell me the best way to achieve incrementals during the week, a full backup on the weekend, and then that full backup being copied to tape.

[PTide]

Hi,

We are taking daily incrementals and on weekends I'd like to create a synthetic full backup and copy that to tape. To achieve this, I have selected the 'create active full backups periodically' on all of my backup to disk jobs.

First of all, to create synthetic full on weekends you have to select "create synthetic full backups periodically" not "create active full backups". In the backup to tape job settings please go to the "Options step, prees the "Advanced" button, choose "Advanced" folder, check the "Process latest full backup only". Also make sure that by the time the backup to tape job starts all of the source jobs have already finished creating full restore points.

Thanks.

[veremin]

It's a bit hard to explain here what is happening, but I either get 2 copies of full backups on tape, or only 3 or four of my backups get copied to tape.

Most likely, extra full got copied because your tape retention was shorter than disk one. Thus, a full backup previously that had been archived previously got erased from tapes but still stayed on disk. Thus, it got archived second time due to it not being present on tapes any longer.

The said check-box should allow you to avoid such situation. Be aware to update to the latest product version, as I remember there used to be issues related to that functionality in previous builds.

Thanks.