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Should I have tapes in my tape library that have “Last Write Time” set as a date (not empty value) but they are 0 bytes?

  • August 20, 2024
  • 2 replies
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In “normal Commvault Operations”, Should I have tapes in my tape library that have “Last Write Time” set as a date (not empty), and on them a write session (or a few), but the data on the tape is 0 bytes and no associated storage policy?

For all storage policies/tape copies (except a few) we have “infinite” retention set on the tapes.  For those that do not, retention is “years” (except the DR tape(s) .  We do not re-use tapes.

I have several (like 40 tapes) with “Last Write Time” set to a few days (or weeks… a few are months)  ago, etc and all are0 bytes. Not all tapes in the system that are 0 Bytes have Last Write Time set.  Using ‘tape → view contents” shows “no data” (as expected). The tapes show they have been mounted (“Number of mounts > 0) and there sems to be a file marker or 2 on them.

So: I’m wondering how to tell “what its writing to them” and why or if “this is normal” as part of some internal 1 time “tape validation/initialization” job or something… but that doesn’t explain why some tapes have > 1 write (usually 2 or 3 writes)

Best answer by Albert Williams

Hello @tigger2 

Thanks for the question and detail. The only thing i can think of is a validation to do what you are saying. 

In the case it was aged data ( you advised that it is not ) then even if you view the content of the tape it would show you aged jobs. 

 

The validations are a OnDemand action of a tape, you could check your audit history to see if anyone has triggered them by searching the barcode.

 

Out side of that i am out of ideas, it might be a support case to do a review of the CSDB to find why the flag is present. 

 

Kind regards

Albert Williams

2 replies

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Hello @tigger2 

Thanks for the question and detail. The only thing i can think of is a validation to do what you are saying. 

In the case it was aged data ( you advised that it is not ) then even if you view the content of the tape it would show you aged jobs. 

 

The validations are a OnDemand action of a tape, you could check your audit history to see if anyone has triggered them by searching the barcode.

 

Out side of that i am out of ideas, it might be a support case to do a review of the CSDB to find why the flag is present. 

 

Kind regards

Albert Williams


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  • Author
  • Apprentice
  • September 8, 2026

Answer was marked as best 2 years later… thought I’d add a little:

I opened 2 tickets on this, about 2 years apart.

  • First ticket: essentially ‘there must be some jobs that are running” . We never got any detail on what these could be.  I closed the ticket as I didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment
  • Second ticket: basically, figured out it is likely due to index jobs, which do age out, being written to tapes.  The logic being that the tapes are being chosen “randomly”.  Not really a way to prove this, that I can tell, but at least it makes some sense (that we do have some types of tape jobs that auto age out, because all other tape jobs in our policies are set to infinite retention).