> I guess the "reserve" parameter is configured to 100 (the 
> default) or only so much that the 6.2 Gbyte full dump does 
> not fit. The reserve parameter indicates how much to reserve 
> to full dumps on holdingdisk when dumping in degraded mode.
> 
> You had a tape error, and amanda decides to degrade some or 
> all full dumps to incrementals and continue with dumps to holdingdisk.
> 
> But, because (from the context) it seems it never did a full 
> dump, amanda can't switch to incremental, because there is no 
> previous full dump to base the increments on.
> 
> Was this what happened?


I'll check on the reserve parameter - I just checked my holding disk
size and it was set at 15000 MB, which this 6.2 GB full dump would not
fit on the holding disk with the over 10GB from my other disks...I
increased the size of my holding disk so that would not be a problem.

This would have been the first time I backed up this client, so that's
why I didn't totally understand the error. You are absolutely
right...how can I expect it to do an incremental due to lack of holding
disk space when it's never done the full level 0???? Amanda is so much
smarter than me. With the hopes of no media errors on the horizon, I'm
sure it will work tonight. Thanks for the input.