Reimporting Tapes into NetBackup.

These are my notes on reimporting old tapes. These tapes were shipped off site after NetBackup vaulted the tapes. They are still listed in NetBackup as vaulted. In order to reuse these tapes, they will need to be expired. The steps list below will allow you to reuse the tapes.

Steps
1) Put the old tapes into the MAP.

2) In NetBackup run, inventory tape.

3) Run the command below to expire the tape.
Syntax: bpexpdate -m -d 0 -force

root@earth> bpexpdate -m E00154 -d 0 -force

On UNIX and Linux systems, the directory path to this command is /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/
On Windows systems, the directory path to this command is \NetBackup\bin\admincmd\

4) Back in the GUI refresh your display.

5) Check to see if the imported tapes are in the scratch volume pool. Make sure all the details match the existing tapes in the library.

Reference
bpexpdate man page at Symantec.