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Veritas Bakup Mayhem

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by it

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I have Veritas backup 8.5 running on Windows NT.I have purchased 19 DAT tapes in the hope of running the Grandfather / Son rotation scheme as shown in user guide!! .I used the wizard to set this up and first started on a Wednesday with a normal backup.When I put this tape back in on the Friday as instructed it would'nt append.This also happened on the Wednesday tape.I looked at the properties for this media and it said "overwrite 4 weeks" and "append 6 Days".That is correct isnt it.It wouldnt append to the media so I had to change the overwrite period to 6 days also.It then worked but surely this defeats the object of automatic backup.Is this a common problem or am I stupid ?If I confuse then here is
An example of my media:
Differential backup :Wednesday 10/07/01 so when I put in the same Wednesday tape on the 17/07/01 it should I believe append that days data onto the tape.6 days have passed so append should happen...I hoped.
But no it will not back up to that tape saying it cant be overwritten which is correct.I have to change the properties to 6 day Overwrite for it to write data to the tape.
Can you offer any advice.Thanx for your help....

7 replies

by kevin.ellison

I haven't looked at version 8.5, but I there was a setting in the older versions in the backup job or tape drive config itself that forced overwrite to tape, which would obviously conflict with the job you were trying to perform. Also, be sure to check data size on the tape. If there is not enough free space on the tape, it would be forced to attempt an overwrite instead of append. Hope it helps!

by jereg

I'm using Veritas 8.5 but my recommendation is to stop doing incremental backups. While they work, they are often problematic. I've worked in companies where we did incremental or differential backups and always had problems. If not in running or configuring jobs, than in trying to do a restore from old tapes that had become damaged. If any one tape goes bad, you can't doa restore. The companies I worked at where we did a full backup every night never had any problems. I recommend doing the full backup every night. If you are concerned about space, do a ghost of your server files on CD, then just back up your data.

by james a bailey

I am currently using Veritas 8.5 and started using 8.0, and have been for the last year and a half. I have gone through the same headaches you speak of. I feel you pain. I finally have all my backups lined out. Here is what I did. I also use the grandfather/father/son scheme using differntial and full backups.

As far as append periods and overwrite protection goes (this may sound crazy), but I set all settings to NONE. I then tell the backup jobs to Eject the tape upon completion so if I do happen to forget to change out the tape, it wont be overwritten. I then write protect the full backups that are to be held so they cannot be accidently overwritten. I have gone months without a failed backup. All I ever do is put the tape in the drive and forget about it.

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