cristiano.cumer Posted August 10, 2009 Report Share Posted August 10, 2009 Hello, I'm using retrospect 8.1 together with a Nec tape library. Once a month I copy my backups from disk media sets to tape, to bring them off site. It's possible to have Retrospect to automatically choose free tapes from the library and to add them to the mediaset that I want to bring off site? Or do I have to manually assign the tapes to the mediaset before the backup starts? Regards Cristiano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cristiano.cumer Posted August 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 Found the solution myself: You have to check: automatic skip to blank media in the media preferences C. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted August 17, 2009 Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 You may want to consider unchecking that option and manually adding the tape to the media set. Reason being: When Retrospect uses some autoloaders / tape drives, it can believe that a tape is "erased" if a tape error occurs at BOT. While the usual cause is if the tape is truly erased, such that Retrospect can't find its tape header that it writes at the beginning of the tape, this can also happen if the heads need cleaning on the drive. Just a suggestion for you to consider... Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cristiano.cumer Posted August 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 Thank you, is your suggestion valid also if I have bar code scanning enabled? Retrospect should know if the media was used or not, or is autoloading entirely managed by the library? My library is also configured for auto-cleaning so I hope the drive will work fine. Cristiano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted August 17, 2009 Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 Well, because there is not currently a User's Guide for Retrospect 8, I can't answer your question. Retrospect 6.0 and 6.1 had what I consider to be a bug (disputed by EMC support a few years back when I reported it under our service contract) such that, if it needed an erased tape, and if such an error occurred at BOT on a barcoded tape (regardless of whether the tape had prior backup data on it or not), Retrospect would believe that the tape was "erased" and would use that tape regardless of whether the barcode was already matched to a prior backup set member. This bug was fixed years ago in the Windows version of Retrospect (Retrospect Windows 6.5 build 319) but was never fixed in the Macintosh version of Retrospect. EMC support refused to log this as a "bug" because it arguably was the stated behavior in the Retrospect 6 User's Guide (reasonable minds can disagree). Whatever, but I was bitten by this, um, feature. It's a difficult case to reproduce, and there is no User's Guide for Retrospect 8 to state the intended behavior. I would hope, because Retrospect 8 supposedly started from the Retrospect Windows code base, that this bug ("feature"?) has been fixed, but I don't know. Our workaround has been to do a cleaning cycle once a week on the drive. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cristiano.cumer Posted August 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 Ok, thanks for the explanation. Usually I use the library just for taking backups off site once a month. Daily backups are made on disk. I will test it for some months and see if it works for me or not. Ciao Cristiano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted August 17, 2009 Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 One thought on how to test would be to take the barcode off of a valid media set member and move that to a truly erased (blank, not "erased" by Retrospect) tape, set up for "automatic skip to blank media", see if that barcoded "erased" tape gets used. Furthermore, I don't know what your barcode scheme is, but we had barcodes made that matched our member names of the media set (backup set) members. The choice by Retrospect of which "erased" tape in the autoloader was used seemed to be random, which makes management of barcoded tapes difficult if not impossible. That's another reason to pre-name your tapes and add them to the media sets. Just a thought. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cristiano.cumer Posted August 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 Thanks for the suggestion, I will try it out if I manage to take one of those barcodes OFF the LTO tape. The usage scheme is not important to me, codes are simply ascendent numbers, so I just take the log or the media set and write the members down. Cristiano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted August 17, 2009 Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 (edited) Good luck. I've never been able to get one of the barcodes to come off intact (seems to be by design). I'd suggest something such as photocopying a barcode of a known valid member and gluing that photocopy onto a truly blank tape (that has not been given a tape header, so that a known tape error will occur at BOT). We have a different scheme here, and barcode the tapes when they arrive with appropriate barcodes so that no logging is ever needed, and so the media set members can be known simply by looking at the barcodes. The barcodes are named, for example, 1-A 0340 2-A 0340 (etc., for members of media set A 0340) 1-B 0340 2-B 0340 (etc., for members of media set B 0340) Russ Edited August 17, 2009 by Guest photocopy barcode as test Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philrichardson Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 Hello Russ This is a bit by the by, but i am curious about your barcoding. Are you buying your barcodes at many dollars a sheet, by telling the supplier what numbers you are wanting? Or, are you printing them yourselves? I have had to do a lot of homework and experiment to get my LIB162 to recognize barcodes that i encode 39 mod 43, and print and attach. Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 (edited) Are you buying your barcodes at many dollars a sheet, by telling the supplier what numbers you are wanting? Or, are you printing them yourselves? I have had to do a lot of homework and experiment to get my LIB162 to recognize barcodes that i encode 39 mod 43, and print and attach. Perhaps some big enterprise outfit might print their own, but we don't. We use: Tri-Optic Their service has always been great, online ordering, full selection, never a problem, reasonable prices, great customer service. For our VXA-2 (Tri-Optic Barcode 1699-EB), the barcodes are $0.40 (USD) each, has been the same price for the past 5 years. Other barcodes are similar. Here is the direct link for the Sony AIT barcodes: Sony AIT barcodes Hope this helps, Russ Edited September 9, 2009 by Guest Added AIT barcode link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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