Catalog Error with Backup Exec

The disaster recovery project has been moving along with fits and starts. I was certainly expecting this to be a learning experience and it hasn't failed to disappoint in that regard. Today, I kicked off a catalog of a new tape and promptly received this error:

The requested media is not listed in the media index and could not be mounted. To add the media's catalog information to the disk-based catalogs, run an inventory operation on the media and resubmit the Catalog operation.

I ran another successful inventory of the tape for good measure, but the error remained. I rebooted the server and the tape drive. No love. Frustrating since I've been successfully cataloging tapes for the last few weeks.

Following the links from the error report, I turn off the option to "Use storage media-based catalogs." By clearing the check box for this option, Backup Exec was forced to ignore any catalog information on the tape itself and build the catalog by reviewing each file on tape individually. This process takes longer, but in my case, was successful.

This is the recommended change to make when normal catalog methods fail. It's also something you'll need to do if you must catalog the contents of single tape from a backup job that spans multiple tapes, which can also fail if you don't have all the tapes from the set in inventory. For more information about the differences between storage media-based catalogs and on-disk catalogs for Backup Exec, check out this additional explanation of the "storage media-based catalog" option at Symantec's website.