UPDATED: This same option also exists in Backup Exec 2014. These instructions are also the same for 2014. However, in 2014 there is also a checkbox where you can disable this feature. Click here for a screenshot.
I ran across this issue recently when troubleshooting why four removable backup drives in a drive pool kept going into read-only mode at seemingly random intervals. Initially, I would go into the drive properties, switch the drive to allow write operations, only for it go back to read-only just a few weeks later.
My client was using 4 removable USB drives in rotation. These drives were all in one drive pool in Backup Exec. They would swap the drives out weekly, so each drive would be offline for as much as 3 weeks.
What I found, which appears to be new to Backup Exec 2012, is a setting that automatically switches any removable disk to read-only mode after a set number of days. The default is 14 days. I’ve since increased this number past 3 weeks and had no problems.
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