Message " Data from a previous copy attempt " and " was unexpectedly found " shown in the NetBackup problems report

Problem

NetBackup has a feature to try and identify potential orphaned images and fragments in the catalogs.    
An orphaned image or fragment is one which exists on storage, but does not exist in the NetBackup catalog.  
In some circumstances, an orphaned image is described as an image existing in the NetBackup catalog which does not exist on storage, but that is not strictly true, because if the data does not exist on the storage, then it’s not recoverable and does not cause a storage leak.

When orphaned images are detected, further investigations are required to determine if the image / fragment is orphaned or not, which is not covered in this technical article.
 

Error Message

From bperror command or  Problems report and the bpdm log:
Data from a previous copy attempt (created Thu Feb 27 13:17:12 2025) was unexpectedly found: <CLIENTNAME>_1740662158_C1_IM

Cause

From NetBackup 10.4 there is a new feature designed to identify orphaned images. This is designed to help determine any action steps required, for example, to manually cleanup the orphaned entries from storage.

In this scenario, the entries relating to the messages Data from a previous copy attempt was unexpectedly found, are being generated for Import fragments (IM fragments).
When the replication jobs are created, a new IM fragment is created for the same backup image which will have an additional retry extension count ( _Rx ), but the original IM fragment should be removed, but as the storage is WORM (Write Once Read Many), the original IM fragment cannot be removed and this is causing the potential orphaned entry.  
In this scenario, the IM fragment is a few bytes in size and when the images are finally cleaned from storage (when the expiration is reached), all the associated fragments will be removed and this does not cause a storage leak or leave orphaned entries indefinitely.
 

Solution

Informational only, no actions required.      

It is true, there may be many entries listed in the bperror reports showing the message Data from a previous copy attempt was unexpectedly found, but these can be ignored if these are the *_IM fragments.  
At this time, there are no plans to have these messages omitted as arguably they are correct, but this may change in future NetBackup releases.
 

At this time, there are no plans to address this issue through a patch or hotfix in the current or previous versions of the software. Although this issue may potentially be resolved in a future major revision, it is not currently scheduled for any upcoming release. If this issue has a significant business impact on your continued use of the product, please contact your Sales representative or the Sales team to discuss your concerns.