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Cylindric
Asked: 2011-01-27 03:24:40 +0800 CST

Correct backup settings for overflow tape in Backup Exec

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We have a situation where our backups sometimes don't quite fit on one tape, and there's no budget for a bigger drive.

What we do have is two separate tape drives, so we've hooked them both up to the backup server.

My question is, how should I configure Backup Exec (12.5) correctly to use these drives?

Here's what I've tried

  • Drive 1 called HP1
  • Drive 2 called Dell1
  • A device pool called TapeDrives containing Dell1 and HP1
  • Policies have a Duplication task pointing to TapeDrives as their device

The problem I have is that the tape is HP1 fills up, and the job moves onto Dell1, but subsequent jobs try to load HP1, so stall.

Should the "Preferred source device" in my jobs be pointing at the drive I want used first (HP1 by preference), or the pool?

The verification jobs also now fail, because HP1 was ejected due to being full!

How do I configure two devices to be used in BE, so that one device is used by preference, then the second if required?

backup tape

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I got a confirmation from BackupExec that what I wanted to do is not possible. We bought a bigger drive.

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  2. You could try selecting "All Devices" as the target device in the job properties.

    Also, how about swapping the tape when it gets full?

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