> I am using Networker 7.2 Windows Version. Here is what i have
> 
> As i said i have 8-tape Auto-Loader. Of that i have 6 slots filled with 6
> tapes.
> 2 of those tapes are 200 GB/ and 4 of them are 100GB uncompressed.
> 
> Right now this what is shows in the volumes tab
>           Written     Used     expiration date
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> tape1 : 78GB     full       03/31/2006
> tape2:  49GB     full       03/24/2006
> tape3:  34GB     full      10/26/2006
> tape4:  64GB     full       03/31/2006

That's not much data if the tape is supposd to hold 100GB of
uncompressed data.  These volumes are scheduled to expire in the future
unless you intervene.  If you have to intervene, then you're probably
not keeping volumes as long as your retention policy suggests that you
should.

> tape5  110GB    full       manual
> tape6  130GB    full       manual

These volumes will never expire and be reused on their own.  They've
been set so that only an administrator action will recycle them.

> Following are the questions
> 
> 1. How come the "Used=Full" when it is not using the total capacity of the
> tape

Networker doesn't know how much data can actually fit.  It writes until
the tape reports an error or that the tape is full.  Then it marks the
tape full and moves on.  

You should see if you're getting any errors from the drives associated
with those smaller ones.

> 2. How come tape 1 can save upto 78GB and says it is full, tape2 can save
> upto 49GB says it full.

Most of the time this can be explained by variable compression.  But if
you're not even getting to the uncompressed capacity, then it might be
hardware or cable errors (or something similar).

> 3. How can make all those tapes ready to overwrite, and tell networker to
> re-use it.

You can mark the tape and all of its contents recyclable.  You can do it
from the gui or command line.

# nsrmm -o recyclable <volume>

For the last two you'd also have to turn off the manual flag so that
networker is allowed to reuse them.

# nsrmm -o notmanual <volume>

Together, this tells networker that the data is no longer important and
can be overwritten at any point in the future.  It will continue to
track much of the inormation about the data up until the tape is
actually overwritten.

> Guys:
> When you manual recycle, does it manaul delete everything off the tape?

Yes.  Any recycle/relabel (not just marking it recyclable in the future)
will write to the beginning of the tape.  It's almost impossible for
consumer tape drives to read past that new data to recover anything
older that's still on the tape.  

> I did see some options of manual recyling under the following menu from the
> GUI
> 
> Devices:
>    :-> Tape:
>         :->Operations
>               :->Label
>                    : ->Manual Recycle:

Yes.  That rewrites it *now*.  The other command tells networker that it
can use the volume in the future if it needs space for data (presuming
that the tape pools are compatible).

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham AT taos DOT com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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