Stand-alone volumes are the volumes that reside in the drives that are not in a robot or are allocated for stand-alone drives.

Because NetBackup does not label volumes until it uses them, you can add volumes even though they do not reside in a drive. The additional volumes are available for use if the volume in a drive becomes full or unusable. For example, if a volume in a stand-alone drive is full or unusable because of errors, NetBackup ejects (logically) the volume. If you add other stand-alone volumes, NetBackup requests that volume; NetBackup does not generate an out of media error.

The easiest way to add stand-alone volumes is to use the Volume Configuration Wizard. Then, when NetBackup requests one of the volumes, insert it into the stand-alone drive and NetBackup labels it.

The DISABLE_STANDALONE_DRIVE_EXTENSIONS option of the nbemmcmd command can turn off the automatic use of stand-alone volumes.