Example 1. A tape autoloader and 12 tapes

Consider the following scenario:

• You have 12 tapes and a tape autoloader attached to the machine whose data you want to back up.
• You want to back up the machine data so that if there is insufficient space on a tape, the backup continues onto another one.
• When all of the tapes are filled, you want them to be overwritten sequentially without any user interaction.

You need a separate pool for the backup plan that will perform this scenario. If you have or are planning to create other backup plans that write to the same tape device, use other pools for those plans.

Sequence of actions

1. Load your tapes into the autoloader slots.
2. Perform the fast inventorying with the Move newly detected tapes from the 'Unrecognized tapes' or 'Imported tapes' pools to the 'Free tapes' pool check box selected.

   Result. The loaded tapes are in the Free tapes pool. If some of them are sent to the Acronis pool or a custom pool, this means the tapes contain backups you did earlier on this machine. Move such tapes to the Free tapes pool manually if you don't need these backups.

3. Decide whether you want to back up to the default Acronis pool or to create a new pool. In either case, clear the Take tapes from the Free tapes pool automatically... check box in the settings of the chosen pool.
4. Move all of the loaded tapes from the Free tapes pool to the chosen pool.
5. Create a personal vault and associate your pool with it.
6. When creating a backup plan:
   • Select your vault as the backup location.
   • Select the Custom backup scheme. Set the backup schedules in such a way that the whole set of 12 tapes contains at least two full backups. This will allow the software to overwrite tapes as appropriate.
   • In Clean up archive, select When there is insufficient space while backing up.

Result

The backup plan will use only the tapes located in the selected pool. When all of the tapes are full, the oldest tape will be overwritten, and so on.