Simple Tape Re-use problem

[eastleyd]

I am having a problem re-using tapes in TSM. I have a single tape drive defined in a manual library - hence - no need to check in/out tapes.



I have a set of 15 tapes, all labelled and volumes defined with the same names as the tapes.



I stick the tape in the drive, and get all the tsm clients to back up to it over night. - works fine!



then during the day, I remove the tape, and stick the next one in the sequence into the drive. The same process happens again..backup overnight, replace during the day.



This goes on for 15 cycles - until my tapes are all used.



I then want to go back to the first tape and overwrite it (there will be nothing needed on that tape) - even though it is an incremental backup each night. - if a file hasn't been touched for 15 days, it is a gonna - thats no problem - its how we want it.



The problem is, when I try to write to a tape that has already been used, it is rejected.



How do I clear/emtpy the volume so I can start writing back to it - do I really need to delete the volume, relabel the tape, and re-create the volume!??!?



Any help would be great.



cheers

 

[AndyRH]

You should consider this before you finish your tape clear search.

If a file is on the 1st tape and is only changed once a year, and the volume the file is on becomes corrupted and lost, that file can not be retrieved. At first this may not seem bad, but if that file contains your salary information and you just erased your backup, do you still get paid?



You will need more tapes and you can also have TSM write to a tape until the tape is full, you do not have to use a new tape everyday.

If you want to use a grandfather, father, son tape rotation, BackupExec is a very good product for small shops.



Andy