Seagate Backup Exec 14.x reuse improperly allocated tape
Let’s say you have a DLT drive and you are running a backup job like this:
Full
Incremental
Incremental
{eject}
Next tape
etc.
Every so often, due to power outages, mistakes etc. a tape may eject out of the drive. So you pop it back in but the job won’t run, it ejects the tape and asks for a tape that is over writeable and the current tape is already (previously) allocated and you can’t use it.
There is an easy solution for this, but you’ll need to re-run your full backup job.
How to address it:
- With the current tape out, cancel the current job, so that the jobs re-queue as queued in the future
- pop the tape in
- go to the Storage tab, click on the DLT drive
- pick INVENTORY -> Inventory Now
- Let that complete
- pick Erase -> Erase now
- restart the FULL job and let it complete.
- the next incremental job will then run as scheduled and you are back on track with the backup cycle.