Fastback Respository - Disk?

[GregE]

Fastback Respository - Disk? Volume?

If I choose a lettered Drive as the Fastback repository, why does it show up in the Repository view as a folder and not a volume? And it has as status of "folder." But it's actually LUN on a SAN.

I don't see anything different to do when choosing the repository disk, so why is this not a SAN disk or volume in the view?

 

[rso]

There are few differences in the way FastBack work with a repository on disk (not volume) and a volume / folder.
For a disk repository, FastBack will manage the disk: It will formant the disk (and will delete all partitions on it) and then it will write a special signature in sector 0 saying it's a repository and the name of the FastBack server it belongs to. The limit on this kind of repository disk is 2TB. One of the advantages for this is that FastBack will know to monitor the amount of data on the disk.
For repository on Volume / Folder FastBack expects to get a formatted space and the size it can use in this location. The information about this repository (size, the FastBack server it belongs to etc.) is stored in a file located on the volume/folder. The size limit for this type of repository location is higher (16TB I think). FastBack is only aware of how much data it wrote to this location, so if any other application is writing data there, FastBack might run into an error that FastBack fails to write to the repository because there is not enough free space.
There are some other differences that are related to the signature FastBack puts in sector 0, one of them is that if you boot the system and prevent the FastBack server and mount services from starting, you will not see repository locations that are on disk.