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Wayne_Maranduik's avatar
Wayne_Maranduik
Level 4
16 years ago

Trying to Restore data from old tapes onto new BE server - Help!!

We have a need to restore data from old tapes (DLT 4) and have since moved on to Ultrium tapes. We have created another BE server (v12.5) and hooked up an old DLT drive, but when we go to catalogue the old media, we always get the message the the media is unrecognized and needs to be erased. We have tried several tapes with the same result... Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec

7 Replies

  • WalterH's avatar
    WalterH
    Level 2
    16 years ago

    Is "Use storage media-based catalogs" checked or unchecked?

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    16 years ago
    Did you install the Symantec drivers for the DLT tape drive?
  • Wayne_Maranduik's avatar
    Wayne_Maranduik
    Level 4
    16 years ago
    We have tried both the Symantec and Microsoft drivers for the tape drive.
    We have only been able to successfully catalogue 1 tape out of the 6 or 7 that we have tried.  (that 1 success was using the Microsoft driver).
  • Ken_Putnam's avatar
    Ken_Putnam
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    We have only been able to successfully catalogue 1 tape out of the 6 or 7 that we have tried.  (that 1 success was using the Microsoft driver).

    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but depending in how long it has been since they were written, and whether they have been in a controlled atmosphere (temperature and humidity) it is entirely possible that the tape media itself has degraded to the point that only a Data Recover company may be able to get any data off
  • Wayne_Maranduik's avatar
    Wayne_Maranduik
    Level 4
    16 years ago
    Hi Ken,

    I remember posting to the Forum a looong time ago and having you answer some of th requests. Good to see you are still here. :)

    We have considered that as a "last resort" option, right now we are going to try installing some previous versions of BE (v9-11d) and see if we have any better luck using a version prior to v12.5

    We have probably 30 tapes that are DLT IV format, btu so far have only been able to read and catalogue a single DLT III tape....
  • teiva-boy's avatar
    teiva-boy
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    I've run into this, with bad tapes...  The best price we seemed to have gotten then in mid 2000's was around $4000 for a diagnostic of 30 DDS and AIT tapes.  They then recovered it to a large SATA HDD.  But they gave us the HDD for free laugh  The data that was on tapes they couldn't easily read, prices were up to $2000 a tape for the recovery process.  

    Since much of those were on DDS tapes and from Exch 5.5, and it would take even longer to build an NT domain and rebuild an Exch 5.5 environment, we skipped on those tapes.

    This was iomega data recovery services.  Yes the same Iomega name you know, just a different business unit.