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Tech_from_ACOME's avatar
13 years ago
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How to browse LTO/Disk content

Hi,

Please can you help me to understand how I can browse LTO or disk content with BE 2012 ? I have a LTO, but don't know what is it. I want to browse the LTO to see the content. I tried in many ways, but haven't been able to browse the content. I can only see a set of backups, but I am not sure it's the content. What I did is an inventory. Actually, I had some strange behaviour. For example, I made an inventory on an hardisk. Then I formated it and made another inventory. I still have data in the set of backups. I did not found a way to browse the disk, from BE, and see that there is no data anymore.

What is the right way to browse a LTO/disk content to be sure that what we are seeing is the real content ?

Thank you for your help.

Best regards.

Matteo

  • @matteo -

    The proper way to see know what is on a disk or tape media is

    1) inventory the media.  This is to let BE know that the media exists

    2) catalog the media.  This will enumerate the contents of the media.  If you cannot catalog the media, then you cannot do anything with it in BE.  For example, if you catalog your LTO tape and it failed for whatever reason, then you cannot use it for a restore.  It could be that it was written by another backup software.

    After cataloging the media, you would be able to see the backup sets on the media when you click on it in the Storage tab.  You can also try to do a restore from a backup set on the media and the restore selection screen will show you all the individual items.

  • enable showhiddenmedia (refer http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH179265) Then when you see the B2D media double click it and you should see the content In BE 2012 when you delete the backup set from storage it in turn delete the bkf from Backup to Disk location. If you format the Drive where the B2D was then the catalog still remain in BE since you have not deleted the backup sets from BE (which will inform the BE database that the entries for the backups have gone) To check for contents in tape go to slots and then you can go to details for Tapes. For tapes it still follows media sets. To know the content at a granular level , click on restore.
  • @matteo -

    The proper way to see know what is on a disk or tape media is

    1) inventory the media.  This is to let BE know that the media exists

    2) catalog the media.  This will enumerate the contents of the media.  If you cannot catalog the media, then you cannot do anything with it in BE.  For example, if you catalog your LTO tape and it failed for whatever reason, then you cannot use it for a restore.  It could be that it was written by another backup software.

    After cataloging the media, you would be able to see the backup sets on the media when you click on it in the Storage tab.  You can also try to do a restore from a backup set on the media and the restore selection screen will show you all the individual items.

  • How are you going to see the contents of an unknown media or do a restore from it without doing a catalog?

  • Thanks for your response.

    I tried what you described, and it worked on LTO.

    I tried to format a hard drive, then invertory and the catalog it. I still have the backups that were before formating. As Gurvinder Rait said, I have to delete the backup sets manually. But why is there a difference between LTO and hard drives ? Because of that, I may confuse if a hard drive is formated (or whatever), then catalogued. I will see on BE that there is a set of backups, try to restore and indeed get an error.

    Best regards.

    Matteo

  • When you format (erase) a tape, BE knows that you are destroying the backup sets on the tape and it will delete the catalogs accordingly.

    When you format a drive, this is an OS action.  BE does not know that you have destroyed the backup sets on this drive and hence it does not delete the corresponding catalogs, so you can see the backup sets in BE.  You would then have to retire and delete these backup sets.  If you retire and delete the backup sets without formatting the drive, then BE 2012 will delete the corresponding disk files for you.  For previous versions of BE, you would have to delete the corresponding disk files yourself, after retiring and deleting the media.

  • Thank you for those explanation. Maybe it would be usefull for users that BE detects when a backup has been erased from a hard drive and then flag it into the catalog (or even delete it ?), because anyhow it would never be possible to restore this backup anymore ?

    Regards.

    Matteo

  • For disk media, the preferred way is to retire/delete them from BE, rather than just formatting the disk.