Auxiliary copy to use and fill same tapes info

Hi @Backup_team , thanks for the question!

When the Aux copy (first) runs, 1 tape will be assigned per Stream (depending on how much data there is to copy), and those tapes will be used until they are Full (or unavailable, i.e. outside the Library).

If you want to ensure only 1 tape is used until Full, then onto another tape, combine the streams to 1 (though if you have multiple tape drives, you may want this to be higher for performance reasons).

What’s important is to make sure your older tapes/jobs will age off (all of them) by the time they are needed for subsequent jobs, or else all 8 tapes will be Full, but not ready to age off yet.

If you right-click the aux copy and View Media, you should see a view similar to your top screenshot, but with the addition of the assigned Stream Number which should help.

So, we need to modify this setting at the secondary copy level?

I created 2 storage policies that have 2 secondary copy and i noticed this

the first copy job from the first storage policy uses a tape and after the copy is finished, the tape is removed from the default scratch group and put in the assigned media group

the second copy job from the second storage policy takes another tape and also has this behavior

@Backup_team that is correct, assuming you want only ONE tape used at a time until full, set the streams to combine to 1.  Just note that the tape assigned to stream 2 will not get used by stream 1. It will sit there until it ages (and then no longer be a concern).

Hello,

I don’t know if it is good to reply to very old posts.

I have the same behavior, there is 5 tapes on my library, Storage pool points to Default scratch pool

The difference here is my primary copy that is directly a  copy to tape. (oneshot copy)

Whe I initiate the backup, it uses 2 tapes.

LTO 6, 2 drives

Data to copy is 1.9 TB

for each tape, after the copy, I see that there is still free space and I didn’t manage to optimize the copy (first fill the first tape).

It use 2 tapes instead of 1.

I don’t see this option on the primary copy

Media pool

Storage pool copy

Thanks !