Question : Problem: Yet another Veritas question, backing up to disc then backing up to tape.

I had a crazy idea.  I would like to backup to disc using Veritas, then backup to tape from the disc I just ran the first backup on.  The backup to disc target would be another server with plenty of HD space.  I would think this would drastically decrease my backup time.  I have yet to test this, but I can see one problem already.  How does Veritas know to backup the exchange information store thats is on disc from the first backup?  

I hope that makes sense.

Answer : Problem: Yet another Veritas question, backing up to disc then backing up to tape.

My initial question is why do you want to backup to disk and then tape?
Do you want a local copy and a remote copy?
If so, you can run both jobs simulataneousely.

If you backup to disk first, you're doubling the recovery time, and you're doubling the log space of Veritas on the server.  Also, you now have two chances to corrupt the data.  If you backup toi disk first and then to tape, watch the maximum file size on the disk.  For example, if you choose to allow maximum file sizes of 10Gigs (which causes issues anyway), and one of those files becomes corrupt, you lose 10 Gigs of data.  If you choose 1Gig maximums, you lose 1 Gig of data.  The files are created by Veritas during the backup so that the backup isn't comprised of one file.

Remember: Decreasing your backup time usually is only known by the admin.  If you Double your restoration time, the business becomes aware of it because of lost production.

I don't know your budget, but if backup/restoration time is paramount--and it is with me--buy an LTO drive.  You can write to one as quickly as you can to a disk, if not faster.  Check out an HP Ultrium: http://h18006.www1.hp.com/storage/tapestorage.html
You can throw a lot of data to a single tape, and throw it very fast!