Summary
This article describes the different values of the status tape attribute.
Resolution
In DPX, a tape starts off as "New" or "Empty", becomes "Appendable" after a job or jobs have been written to it. It then becomes "Full" once the backups have reached the end of the tape. It remains in this state until all the jobs on the tape have expired and a catalog condense has run. It then returns to "Empty" and can be reused for other jobs.
Once a tape has been labeled in DPX, it does not need to be relabeled.
A tape defined in a media pool will start off with a "New" status. Once it has been labeled, it will become "Empty". Tapes with bar code labels in tape libraries with bar code readers will start out as "Empty". Other frequently seen statuses are: "Offsite", "Twin", "Twin primary", and "In mount". These are additional attributes of the main status of the tape ("Appendable", "Full", "Empty"), so a tape that is offsite will also be "Full" or "Appendable". A "Twin" tape may be "Appendable" or "Full" and it can also be "Offsite".
In some instance a tape with an "In-mount" status has been left in this status when a backup job has not finished successfully. The tape is left "In-mount" so that it won't be reused during the job. You should take a look at the job log and then decide whether to remove the "In-mount" status and continue using the tape or do some additional troubleshooting. In some instances, you can manually change the status of a tape in DPX:
- "Full" tapes can be changed to "Empty" by deleting the tape in the catalog functions and running a condense. Note, that the data in the catalog for this tape will be lost. Go to Catalog > Catalog Tape Functions, select the tape you want to delete and then run a condense.
- Onsite/Offsite: You can set the status of any tape to Onsite or Offsite by going to Configure > Media, selecting the media pool containing the tape, selecting the tape and changing its status.