Media Request Time Out Problem

[esirovatka]

Hi I'm new to Retrospect so please excuse my ignorance. I have inherited this setup and I currently have a disk based backup which runs perfectly fine daily to a iSCSI SAN. I wanted to implement an offsite to tape backup weekly for disaster recovery. I have 8 tapes that are members of my tape media set. The problem I am having is that the backup job is always looking for the tape called "1-Weekly Tape Offsite" I want to be able to run a weekly job to a tape take it offsite and run the next week job to "2-Weekly Tape Offsite". The backup runs fine if the number 1 tape is in the drive but if I have any other tape in the drive I get the following error: "Media Request for "1-Weekly Tape Offsite" Timed Out After Waiting 1:39:00"

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Ed

[Ramon88]

You might be confused by the way Retrospect names its tapes.

 

Your backup set is probably called "Weekly Tape Offsite" and it probably consists of 8 tapes which are used like this:

Backup until tape is full, then switch to the second tape until that is full, then switch to the third, etc.

 

Retrospect will name each consecutive tape of that set with a prefix: "1-", "2-", "3-", etc.

 

So if you have the second tape inserted, while Retrospect knows the first one is still not filled, it will keep asking about the first tape and not use the second one.

 

If you want to use a new tape each week, you might want to set up your script differently by changing your scripts Action behaviour (under Schedule) from "Normal" to "New Member".

 

Of course there are other ways to make these weekly backups, but this is one way of doing it.

 

If you are new to Retrospect I strongly suggest to study and test it thoroughly so you develop the needed know how. For first time users it might be a bit intimidating, but it can provide a lot of backup solutions when you get a more intimate understanding of how the program exactly works. Knowing its shortcomings and workarounds also works wonders.

 

Last but not least, test if you can make correct restores. A backup won't do you any good if it doesn't function the way you -thought- it would when you need that restore the most.

[esirovatka]

Thank you for the information. Just to clarify, should I remove tapes 2 - 8 from my backup set prior to changing these options? Will Retrospect automatically make a tape that does not belong to any media set a member of the set for the scheduled script? Or should I just leave the tapes the way they are and just change the script setting you mentioned?

 

Thanks Again