I struggled with this as well, but using the "to recycle" and "from
recycle" settings in the media pool allows this to work in conjunction
with the auto media management setting on the library.

It also comes in very useful when you are sending tapes on and offsite
for DR, as a script can be easily written to deposit the tapes, label
them to the SCRATCH pool, and change the mode to recyclable so they can
be picked up for re-use.

Note that tapes set to recycle mode that are expired will show a (R)
read-only attribute. This is normal, and can be ignored. I am at
7.3.2.jumbosomething.

It really takes the pressure off of having to continually monitor those
media pools that NW seems to not get enough of.

It conceptually works the same way as scratch in the other products, and
it works great.



-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Davina Treiber
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 6:10 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Can someone confirm the following about
"scratch"

Dennis Peacock wrote:
> I'd love to know how to setup a scratch pool on Networker and have all
expired volumes go TO the scratch pool. Just like Backup Express or
Netbackup.
> 

NetWorker doesn't do that. You can set up a scratch pool of sorts, but 
tapes will not go into it when they become recyclable. If it did that 
you would lose the ability to recover (in an emergency) from a 
recyclable tape.

There was a discussion about this recently - check the archives.

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