@Kamil , definitely an interesting question/goal.

You can always make a Selective Aux Copy, set it to Manually pick jobs, then manually select the jobs on Tape #1 and the Aux Copy should provide you with another copy of that tape.

Of course, it won’t be an exact clone, and if any aged jobs linger on tape 1, they will be skipped, but overall this should work.

@Mike Struening 

Yes, I am aware of the possibility of backing up Storage Policy, but thought there was some solution available on the topic of Media Management. The Selective Copy option is quite time consuming.

Did I describe the operation of the "Tape to tape copy" task well, or is it different?

Regards,
Kamil

We don’t really have any option like a ‘clone tape’ ability.  Each tape has to belong to a Storage Policy and a Copy, and we can’t have duplicate media (since there’d be no way to ensure which tape aged off, etc.).

What’s your end goal here?  Lots of jobs copied to new/additional media?  One time, or regularly occurring?

Thanks!

Hi @Mike Struening 

The client needs to have identical backups of two identical tapes. At the very beginning, I recommended exactly what you did - creating a Selective copy, but that doesn't meet their expectations.

Well, I have to make them realize that the only solution in this situation is another copy.

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Please tell me how it is with Tape To Tape Copy.

Does it look like the data from the "source tape" is deleted / marked for pruning or is it left and written to the tape that we selected for the Tape to Tape Copy job?

Regards,
Kamil

We wouldn’t delete anything unless the source copy retention says to do so.  You’d just have two tapes with the same job IDs, but belonging to different copies.

Sure, got it.

In that case, this is a solution in the aspect of "Tape Mirroring", since we will have both tapes with the same data, it can satisfy them, I guess that's what it was about - to make the same data on two tapes, the only problem, as I understand it, is their retention .

The good news is, you can set different retentions per tape if need be.

Hi @Mike Struening ,

We performed the Tape to Tape Copy operation and as I assumed, the data from one tape was transferred to the other (indicated by the tape to tape copy operation). So we didn't have tape mirroring because the data was still only on one tape.

At this point, the only thing that remains is the setting with another Secondary Copy under Storage Policy.

Thanks for your help on this topic.

Regards,
Kamil

Glad to hear it!  Let me know if anything else comes up!