> I must be missing something here. Every day we take out the tape that was
> used the night before, and put it in a safe (in case the comms rooms is ever
> inaccessible).  We then look for a tape from the scratch pool to put into
> the empty slot.  This is fine, except that the scratch pool is not being
> replenished.

I know. My requirements are different. No safe at the moment..

> You say you pick the replacement tapes from the oldest or new volumes.  Do
> you have to manually purge the oldest tapes before you can put them in the
> drive?  Do you use retention periods at all, or just cycle them yourself?
> I'm curious if your method could solve my problem.

Yes I use retention periods but only 1 pool recycles. The rest are
archive that are run from manual jobs. Anyways in this situation I try
to make sure that the pool that recycles always has old tapes in the
changer so that automatic recycling will work. I know your situation
is more complicated.

You may want to submit a feature request. This should not be difficult
to implement. Basically implement an option to disable the only purge
volumes when needed concept.

John