NTBackup Issues - Offline Free Media Bug

On This Page

• Problem Description
• Workaround
• Steps to Reproduce

Problem Description

During a backup, when the first piece of media is full, and you have inserted the second one, the Backup Utility may display the following prompts: "Place Media nnn into drive or library unit", "The library is unable to load the media at this time because the drive is in use. Media Name: nnn". This only happens when the Free Media Pool of Removable Storage contains offline media.

Workaround

You need to delete all offline media from the IBM 3480 Free Media Pool of Removable Storage before performing an interactive backup. Firestreamer-DVD 1.6 and Firestreamer-RM 2.0 or newer will automatically do this for you, if you open the Backup Utility by any of the following methods:

• Click Start, point to Programs, point to Firestreamer-RM, and then click Open Backup Utility, or
• Open the Firestreamer-RM Control Panel, click the Backup tab, and then click Open Backup Utility.

Alternatively, you can delete all offline media from the Free Pool by following the steps below.

1. Remove all media from your media drives.
2. Open Removable Storage.
3. In Full view, in the console tree, expand Media Pools, expand Free, and then expand IBM 3480.
4. Click the details pane, and then press Ctrl+A to select all the media.
5. Press Delete, and then click Yes.

If you encounter this problem during a backup, and you do not want to interrupt the current operation, follow the steps below.

1. Drag the Pending Operator Request and Mount Waiting prompts to a corner of the screen.
2. Open Removable Storage.
3. In Full view, in the console tree, expand Media Pools, expand Backup, and then expand IBM 3480.
4. In the details pane, right click the media label as it appears in the "Place Media..." prompt (for example, 18).
5. Click All Tasks, click Deallocate, and then click Yes.
6. Click the media label again, press the Delete key, and then click Yes.
7. Click Complete on the Backup Utility's Pending Operator Request prompt.
8. Repeat steps 4-7, if necessary, until the backup operation continues.

Steps to Reproduce

NTBackup file version 5.2.3790.1830 on Windows 2003 Server SP1.

1. Label three pieces of media, which have not been used with Firestreamer-RM before, from 1 to 3.
2. Open the Backup Utility.
3. Insert Media 1 into the drive.
4. When prompted with "Unrecognized media has been found... Do you want to prepare...?", click Yes.
5. Remove Media 1, and then insert Media 2.
6. When prompted with "Unrecognized media has been found... Do you want to prepare...?", click Yes.
7. Start backing up an amount of data that exceeds the capacity of Media 2.
8. When Media 2 is full, remove Media 2, and then insert Media 3.
9. When prompted with "... there is no more free media... unrecognized media has been found... Do you want to use this media...?", click Yes.
10. The Backup Utility prepares Media 3 and moves it into the Free Pool. Instead of using the just prepared and mounted Media 3, the Backup Utility allocates Media 1, which is currently offline, and displays an operator request prompting for Media 1.