Tape not being written

[Daithi]

Hi,

We have a disk to tape backup that use two tapes. We reuse these tapes on a four week schedule. I've found that the backup won't write to a tape that has been used already unless it's marked as "free" first. Is there a way to automate this?

[Shestakov]

Hi,
If a tape is online and does not have an active retention, it should be automatically re-used during next job cycle.
Do you have the tape retention(protection period) set?
Thank you

[Daithi]

No, no retention period, set to "Do not protect Data".

Media Set is "Do not create, always use current media set". Would that have anything to do with it?

[lyapkost]

Hi Daithi. Which media pool type your tape job targets to - GFS or standard one? How many tapes you have in the media pool? What is your source backup chain type (forever, forward, reverse)?

[Daithi]

Hi,

Standard media pool. Roughly about 100 tapes and reverse incremental (full file, no incremental backups to tape).

The tape that it wouldn't accept today as the first tape, worked fine as the second tape once I marked it as free in tape infrastructure before putting it back in.

[lyapkost]

Empty tapes from the current media pool have priority over the expired ones. So I recommend that you move all empty tapes from your media pool to Free pool and check 'Add tapes from Free...' on 'Tapes' step. When the job needs a new tape it will firstly check if there are any expired tapes and if so, it will take such tape instead of using one from Free pool.

To summarize, tape order to use in a job:
1. Last written tape of opened media set from the current media pool (if there are several, the tape with more free space has priority).
2. Free tape from the current media pool.
3. Expired tape from the current media pool.
4. Free tape from the Free media pool.