Hi,

I presume that you are using a robotic tape library. Does it support barcode labels and are you using barcode labels?
 
If you are not using barcode labels, there is no way for the library to know which tape is which until the tape is read by the tape drive and the internal tape label is read. This is your inventory job. Until BE know which tape is which, it will not be able to associate it with the correct media set.
 
If there is a barcode label, the library can read the label and pass the information to BE. There is no need to read the internal label. When you first put barcode labels onto your tapes, you need to run an inventory job to allow BE to match the barcode labels with the tapes' unique GUID. After this, you do not need to do any more inventory jobs unless it is a new tape or you change the label. Just import the tape and BE will know which media it is.

with a barcode scanner and all tapes are labeled with barcodes. Sorry that I did not included that info in orignal post.

Inventory the tape.
Then catalog it.
It may fail with "not all the media in the backup set have been inventoried" but if you click restore after this you should see what's on the tape.

Hope this helps,

Gilly

the question is - should not backup exec recognize this tape from vault at once - after import job and put this media into correct media set??
Instead of above desired behavior I am getting this media in scratch media set with description UNKNOWN MEDIA!

Where was the tape originally sent after the backup job ran to it? What media set was it part of?

How long has it been out of circulation? If not long then i'm not sure of the cause.

If it's been a while then it is possible for the tape device to no longer recognise it.

Have you changed the tape device recently? Any firmware upgrades on it?

Gilly

Where was the tape originally sent after the backup job ran to it? What media set was it part of?
The media belongs to media set called MONTHLY (ovewrite protection period 3 years) and it was sent to vault created within BE via vault wizzard.

How long has it been out of circulation? If not long then i'm not sure of the cause.
Media was last in use in June. Since then it is at offsite location (ours vault) logically (in BE is in offsite location - vault) and physically is in offsite locatation - we had to recall this piece of media.

If it's been a while then it is possible for the tape device to no longer recognise it.

Have you changed the tape device recently? Any firmware upgrades on it?
No the library and drives are the same.
After import job BE see it as unknown media - overwritable and in scratch media set, but after inventoring it (physically mounting into drive and rereading label) the media was recognized and put into correct media set. But this should be happening just after import job, right?? By the way the old media label still was in BE but the location has changed from online to offline - this is strange behavior to me!!