Cannot recover backups from tape created w BUE 10 on Win2008 server

[TechLisa]

I have a windows 2008 server that just had a drive in 2 arrays go bad at one time. this left the system absolutely dead. I didn't put this server together and the person who did is not available. The version of BUE that was used to create the tapes was version 10. I was told to install the latest version and there would be no issue restoring. 

I installed version 2010R3 and have tried so many ways over the last 3 days to sucessfully recover the files and AD without luck. I continually get the "inconsistent data" error. I've done the registry setting to slow down the drive, i've cleaned the drive, I've done everything i can find anywhere to fix this issue. Am I just screwed? The worst part is although there are 3 different backups of the system state from last week, none of which want to recover, but only one backup of their main data folders, which has not been successful when restored to the default location, or to an alternate location. always the same error. The error. None of the links have anything to do with this setup as the backups are not spanning multiple tapes nor are they compressed. PLEASE if anyone can help, i need it ASAP!! Thanks in advance,

[yusufusmani · Accepted solution]

- After the installation of BE2010R3, have you reinstalled the Remote Agent for Windows on the servers?

- Have tried deleting the catalog and catalog the tape again and then restore it.

- Can u duplicat the Tape to B2D and try to restore from B2D.

[TechLisa]

thanks for your reply... the remote agent wasn't installed, as far as I know, I catalogged and deleted several times and have reinstalled the OS several times. I'll try to duplicate tape to B2D and see if I can get that going. thanks for the suggestion. I'll update this if that works.

[TechLisa]

Although i wasn't the one who setup this horrible backup scheme, i'd be the one to take the brunt of the users ire if it didn't work. I was able to copy the tapes' jobs to a backup to disk file. I had to do a copy, restore would not work. Also, make sure your file size is at least as large as the backup job on the tape, or you might run into issues as spanning backup volumes seems to trigger errors if you are having this trouble. I will be setting up some sort of image backup that doesn't require reinstalling windows or this ridiculous backup program. Fortunately this hardware does have that capability, so i'll find out how to make it happen. Thank you again for your suggestion. I dont' think it would have occurred to me to try this and nothing else worked. 

[teiva-boy]

Almost 99.99% of the time, if you can recover from disk, it solves so many problems.  Tape sucks!  

This is why there is Backup to Disk, duplicate policies, Deduplication appliances, VTL, etc...  Disk is far superior for recoveries than tape in almost every scenario, except for cost/GB.

Look at adding in backup to disk first, then duplicate to tape.  Keeping at least 2-4wks of retention on disk is usually the right thing to do as 90% of recoveries will be within the first month of deletion of corruption.  You can then limit tape use to a weekly export or even monthly...