Trying to use overwrite/append & failing

We are using 7.3 Backup Exec and Windows NT. We have 1 tape we use for Daily
backups 4 times a day 4 days a week, 1 tape we use 4 nights a week for Differential
Backups and 1 tape we use for Friday Normal backups. We want to append to
the Daily and Differentials for 4 weeks before overwriting and append to
the Friday Normals for 2 weeks before overwriting. To no avail, we have tried
this and cannot get this to work. Each tape is a different media set. I need
help in understanding the overwrite and append options. Current settings:
Daily (overwrite - 4 weeks Overwrite/Append 8 weeks, Differential (2 weeks
Overwrite/4 days Append), and Normal (0 hours Overwrite/Infinite Append).
The Normal settings werer 2 weeks/1 week for this past weekend but the tape
would eject before a backup could be started and then the job monitor would
state that the backup was loading. I aborted the job and changed the settings
to 0 hours/infinte to get the job to run. Help.

Thanks in advance.

DeAnna

DeAnna Wiseman wrote:[color=blue]
>
> We are using 7.3 Backup Exec and Windows NT. We have 1 tape we use for Daily
> backups 4 times a day 4 days a week, 1 tape we use 4 nights a week for Differential
> Backups and 1 tape we use for Friday Normal backups. We want to append to
> the Daily and Differentials for 4 weeks before overwriting and append to
> the Friday Normals for 2 weeks before overwriting. To no avail, we have tried
> this and cannot get this to work. Each tape is a different media set. I need
> help in understanding the overwrite and append options. Current settings:
> Daily (overwrite - 4 weeks Overwrite/Append 8 weeks, Differential (2 weeks
> Overwrite/4 days Append), and Normal (0 hours Overwrite/Infinite Append).
> The Normal settings werer 2 weeks/1 week for this past weekend but the tape
> would eject before a backup could be started and then the job monitor would
> state that the backup was loading. I aborted the job and changed the settings
> to 0 hours/infinte to get the job to run. Help.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> DeAnna[/color]

Each backup is a set of data. Each set of data has an expiration
date. You can't overwrite the beginning of the tape and not know
for certain that you will not clobber un-expired data. By
allowing data to append to the tape, you keep changing the
overwrite date.

Now, what you are trying to do would work on a mainframe (OS/390
using job streams), but, the way Veritas has this implemented in
their system, you can't. As you can see, by globally changing to
0 hours, you can override all tapes (it should be by the tape,
not set for the whole "library").

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