Tape pools
The backup software uses tape pools that are logical groups of tapes. The software contains the following predefined tape pools: Unrecognized tapes, Imported tapes, Free tapes, and Acronis. Also, you can create your own custom pools.
The Acronis pool and custom pools are also used as backup locations.
Predefined pools
Unrecognized tapes
The pool contains tapes that were written by third-party applications. To write to such tapes, you need to move them to the Free tapes pool explicitly. You cannot move tapes from this pool to any other pool, except for the Free tapes pool.
Imported tapes
The pool contains tapes that were written by Acronis Cyber Protect in a tape device attached to another storage node or agent. To write to such tapes, you need to move them to the Free tapes pool explicitly. You cannot move tapes from this pool to any other pool, except for the Free tapes pool.
Free tapes
The pool contains free (empty) tapes. You can manually move tapes to this pool from other pools.
When you move a tape to the Free tapes pool, the software marks it as empty. If the tape contains backups, they are marked with the 
icon. When the software starts overwriting the tape, the data related to the backups will be removed from the database.
Acronis
The pool is used for backing up by default, when you do not want to create your own pools. Usually it applies to one tape drive with a small number of tapes.
Custom pools
You need to create several pools if you want to separate backups of different data. For example, you may want to create custom pools in order to separate:
- backups from different departments of your company
- backups from different machines
- backups of system volumes and users' data.