BE10d server rebuilt, can't catalog B2D drives

[sawallace]

Hi everyone, I'll try to explain how we have things set up and what has happened so hopefully someone can help.
We had Backup Exec for Windows Server 10d on a system (pcbak) backing up company computers to USB hard drives.  Each week, we do a full backup on Friday, then incremental backups Monday through Thursday.  The Friday morning, we swap that USB drive with the next drive and so forth swapping through 4 drives (labelled "USB Drive 1", "USB Drive 2", etc).  On the 4th week, we put on the "USB Drive 4" drive and another USB drive which we duplicate that last backup to for offsite storage.
Ok, this has worked great for years, but last week the primary hard drive in pcbak failed and couldn't be read so we had to replace the drive altogether.  I reloaded the OS (XP Pro) to latest service packs and updates, etc.  I then reloaded Backup Exec and installed all of its updates getting it to 10d (we're long since out of maintenance with Veritas/Symantec <thus I'm asking here...lol>).  I have set up the USB drive devices as "Removable Backup-to-disk Devices" and recreated all the jobs.  It has successfully been doing backups again, so that is great, but the problem is that I don't see all the backup jobs from before the drive failure.  Of course, that makes sense to me since it is a new installation and the old jobs would be unknown.  I thought I could just Inventory the USB drives and then Catalog them to access the old backups in case I need to restore from them.  Unfortunately, while they Inventory fine, when I try to do a Catalog, it says:

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

"Catalog 00016 -- The job failed with the following error: Physical Volume Library Drive not found."

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And the job history for the failed catalog job says:

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Drive and media mount requested: 5/14/2010 1:39:20 PM V-79-57344-33035
Media GUID: {FF54672C-C9ED-4312-BB8D-27531BF6039D}
Media Label: Drive Name: Weekly USB Backup-to-Disk Devices V-79-57344-33035
Physical Volume Library Drive not found.

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Even though I can do an inventory on it, it doesn't seem to see the drive for cataloging.  I have tried this on 2 of the 4 weekly USB drives and 1 of the offsite drives and they have the same error.  I'm not positive that I originally had the USB drives set up as "Removable Backup-to-Disk Deivces" but might possibly have had them as "Backup-to-Disk Folders" (if that's even possible); but I think it used to be "Removable..." so I set it up that way this time.

Has anyone seen this?  How can I restore backups from these drives from before the drive failure/reload?

thank you so much for any help! (and I apologize for being so long-winded)

sawallace

[Dev_T]

Hello,

1  : Stop all the BE services and the SQL service for backup exec
2  : Rename the CATALOGS folder to CATALOGS.OLD
3  : Create a new CATALOGS folder
(C:\Prog. files\symantec\backup exec\catalogs)
4  : Run an inventory and catalog operation

Hope this helps..

[sksujeet]

From the device tab select all the files within the B2D folder and move them to retired media. Once moved to retired media, delete the files from the retired media.

After that follow the below steps:
1> Click on tools - options - catalog and uncheck the options.
2> Run the inventory on the B2D again
3> Run the catalog again.

[sawallace]

Hi DevT, I stopped the BE services and SQL service, renamed C:\Program Files\VERITAS\Backup Exec\NT\Catalogs to ...Catalogs.old, created a new Catalogs folder, and restarting the services, then ran an Inventory on the "Backup-to-Disk Devices and attempted a catalog operation but the catalog operation still fails with this error:

Error : e000810b - Physical Volume Library Drive not found.

Any ideas what's gong on?

thanks again, sawallace

[sawallace]

Hi Sazz, if I do this, will I lose the successful backups I've made over the past couple of weeks since the rebuild?

thanks, sawallace

[Ken_Putnam]

Yes, you would

But you can move them contents to a save location, and return them after you are done

[sawallace]

Hi Ken, thanks!  Please forgive me for being ignorant, but what exactly do I do to move the contents to a safe location?  Do I just more the catalogs folder or all the backup files or what?

thanks, Sawallace

[tech29]

Hi Sawallace,

It is always better to have a copy of Backup Exec catalogs and backup exec database.

In order to copy the "Catalogs" and "Data" folder you need to stop all the backup exec services along with the sql service i.e.  SQL Server (BKUPEXEC).

then copy the catalogs and the data folder to a safe location and then start the SQL Server (BKUPEXEC) service first and then start rest of the backup exec services.

Regards,
tech29

[Ken_Putnam]

You've already tried a clean \catalogs folder

Sazz' latest advice was to remove the BKF files from the catalog.  So if you have the disk space available, I'd say copy your B2D devices to a hold/save location instead, then try the new catalog folder and see what happens