WaitingTape message on tape job

[vee123]

Hello everyone,

I started a backup to tape job in a pool with 10 TB of free space. The backup ran and filled a tape in a media set until it was down to a few GB. There are a total of 3 tapes in the media set, and they are all full now and within the retention period. Now the job has been stuck in "WaitingTape", but there are 10 other tapes in the pool with plenty of free space. Those other tapes are in different media sets.

Does anyone have an idea why that could be?

Thanks

[vee123]

I heard it could be that I have to mark a tape as free, but it has data on it. It has a media set # other than the one the current backup is going to. According to docs, that won't delete the data on tape, but it will delete catalog information?

[Dima P.]

vee123,

How media set creation is configured? If you want to success append data to all media in media pool you can use ‘Do not create, always continue using current media set’ option.

According to docs, that won't delete the data on tape, but it will delete catalog information?

Yes. ‘Mark as free’ deletes the catalogue information without deleting the data. That works if you want to start writing to a specific media without performing erase operation.