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How to handle bad media with a library?


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I am using an Overland Neo2000 tape library with Retrospect 6. Every so often after a full backup weekend (5 to 6 tapes) Retrospect comes back reporting error -206 (dirty heads, bad media, etc...) for a tape, then stops.

According to Overland, if the drive is fine and does not need cleaning, it is really the tape. Maybe it got exposed to strong magnetics they suggested. Anyway, usually I sort the tape out and save it for a long erase.

 

My question is in regards to the best practice: Should I set the tape to missing and insert a new one, name it like the missing tape, and continue?

 

Any comments, also to why 6 months old tapes go bad, welcome :-).

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If the tape is potentially bad, you should mark it as missing and continue your backup onto the next tape. You won't be able to rename a tape to have the same name as the 'missing' member. The next tape will be a new member in the backup set.

 

The following link will provide links to articles on media storage and handling:

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=26981

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I would expect to see tape damage; say if they were returned from off-site or something, but I've been running backups with verify ON (reporting no errors) only to run a manual verify later on a Bkupset and have it report -206 (AIT1 and 2) with out the tapes being removed from the library.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Also, when the verify says it could not verify (ie. 15 files) will I be able to perform disaster recovery or restore from snapshot all but those 15 files or will the job fail with -206(buy a NAS recovery solution) homer.gif

 

 

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