Allowing read/write access to a disk with disk open utility

After you install FastBack Server, the disk write protection feature is automatically enabled. Before you use any drive that you attach to the FastBack Server, the drive is to be opened for read and write privileges. By default, disks that are added have read-only privileges.

If disk open is not used after you attach a new drive to the FastBack Server, any time you try to write data to the drive, all data goes to the buffer. It might seem that data is being copied to the drive, but, if you restart the server, the data is gone because the data was not physically written to the drive. Depending on the amount of data that is written to the disk, you might see some errors reported by the system. For example, "Delayed Write Failed" error messages are logged in the Windows system event logs. Another side effect includes the failure to initialize and format new disks.

The disk open utility must be run from the command line. The disk open utility can take the disk number of the respective disk that you want to open for read/write privileges as an argument. You can find the disk number in the Windows Disk Management window. The disk open utility also takes the DisableSANProtection and EnableWriteOnAllConnectedDisks arguments that are shown.

You can use disk open in the following scenarios:

If you do not use the FastBack Server SAN mode, for example, LAN-free backup and SAN backup, you can use diskopen to disable the disk write protection feature. The following steps disable the FastBack Server SAN disk write protection. After you complete these steps, all disks are accessible for read and write operations.
1. From the Microsoft Windows Start menu, select Start > Run. Enter the following command:
```
CMD
```
2. In the command prompt window, change to the directory that contains the diskopen tool. The default directory is C:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\FastBack\utilities.
3. Enter the following command:
```
DiskOpen -DisableSANProtection
```
4. Restart the system if prompted by the disk open utility.
After you restart the server, all existing and newly connected disks are accessible for read and write operations.
If you use the FastBack Server SAN mode, for example, LAN-free backup and SAN backup, you can use diskopen to open new disks that are connected to the FastBack Server. The following steps enable read and write access to all connected disks. Any new disk that is connected to the FastBack Server, after you complete the following procedure, is write-protected.
1. Disconnect the shared SAN disks from the FastBack Server.
  Attention: Completing the following steps when the shared SAN disks are connected might cause irreparable disk damage that results in data loss.
2. From the Microsoft Windows Start menu, select Start > Run. Enter the following command:
```
CMD
```
3. In the command prompt window, change to the directory that contains the diskopen tool. The default directory is C:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\FastBack\utilities.
4. Enter the following command:
```
DiskOpen -EnableWriteOnAllConnectedDisks
```
5. Restart the system if prompted by the disk open utility.