WaitingTape - Can I execute incremental backup to the same tape

[Kazuha]

Case #05520602

I use a lto5 tape drive. First I made a full backup to my tapeA.
In the backup settings, I enabled both full backup and incremental backup. The tapeA in the media pool was never expired in the settings. I have only one tape(tapeA) in the media pool.
After finishing the full backup, I tried to make an incremental backup to the same tapeA. But the software said "Tape currently in the drive cannot be used for backup" and "Add tape to media pool [media pool name]" and the job status turned to "WaitingTape", host status is "Pending".
But I just made the full backup to tapeA, and it was still in the drive.

How can I make the incremental backup to the tapeA while it already has a full backup on it?

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

What is your Media Set setting in the Media Pool options? And just to clarify: are you using "backup to tape" jobs?

Best regards,
Hannes

[Kazuha]

Hello Hannes, nice to meet you!
I use the community edition, so I use "File to tape" job. More settings including Media Set setting are uploaded in the link below.
https://imgur.com/a/FVe05OZ

Thank you!
Kazuha

[HannesK]

Hello,
the media set... it's configured to create a new one for every backup session. As you want to continue the media set, it needs to be set to "[...] always continue[...]"

Best regards,
Hannes

[Kazuha]

Hey Hannes!
OH my...OH! It works like magic! After I delete and re-configure the job, I can run the same backup job to the same tape!

But now I have another two questions, if I backup C:\test.txt at very first time, then I modify the test.txt and re-backup it to the tape, the Veeam software will only show one test.txt on the tape and when I try to recover it from tape, the software gave me no choice but only recover the latest test.txt.
How can I recover the first version of test.txt, or can I choose a specific tape filelist version(eg. the first version) to view like Veritas Backup Exec?

And the second question is, does Veeam support "Delta Encoding" at incremental backup? That is if I change only a few bytes of a big file, will Veeam only record the changed bytes or it will re-backup the entire file again?

Thank you very much!
Kazuha

[HannesK]

Hello,
older versions can be restored by selecting the backup set. Agree, that's a bit complicated and V12 will simplify that in a way, that it shows only restore points when the file was changed.

second question: no. While it would save disk space, it makes restore slower, because it most cases it would require multiple tapes to restore one file. The scenario you have with only one tape is a corner case.

Best regards,
Hannes

[Kazuha]

Hey Hannes!

Thank you very much! You really helped me a lot!

Sincerely,
Kazuha