Cannot restore data of old backup files, Generating Catalog fails

[sstrobl]

Hi

Please help!

I'm trying to restore some files from a old backup using Veritas BackupExec 9.1 (backups were generated using the same version). Generating the Inventar succeeded, but generating the Catalog fails with:
     "Der Auftrag schlug mit folgendem Fehler fehl: Eines oder mehrere Medienobjekte in der Medienfamilie, die gerade katalogisiert wird, ist nicht im Inventar verzeichnet."
    (In English it sais that the job failed because one or several of the media objects in the media family that are currently being catalogized are not available in the inventar.)

Any ideas on how to access the data in my backup files?

This is in more detail what I did:
- I do weekly complete backups to a "Backup-to-Disk" Folder on a NAS device. These are overwritten every two week so that I'm left with two complete backups of the last two weeks.
- I now copy regularly these weekly backups to a USB Harddisk by simply copying the files that were changed the day of the backup was run. I'm not copying Folder.cfg nor Changer.cfg.
- The backups generally are ok because I've many time restored files from backups that are still stored in its original folder on the NAS.
- Now I tried to backup files from an older backup that I've kept on my USB Harddisk and this fails. I copied the files to a Backup-to-Disk Folder of BackupExec, then generated the inventar and then tried to generate the catalog which fails with above error.

Regards
Stefan.

[Ken_Putnam]

 (In English it says that the job failed because one or several of the media objects in the media family that are currently being cataloged are not available in the inventory.)

This means that all of the BKF files associated with this backup cannot be found.  If your job was an APPEND, then you will need to inventory ALL of them before attempting to catalog any of them

You can also try de-selecting "use media based catalogs"  Sorry, don't remember exactly where it is in v9.x

Cases like this are an excellent argument for all Overwrite jobs, as well as  Duplicating to the tape as opposed to just backing up the BKF files

[sstrobl]

Many thanks for your thoughts.

I'm indeed generating the backups using APPEND or OVERWRITE ("An Medium anhängen oder überschreiben, falls kein anhängbares Medium verfügbar ist").
As you suggested, I tried diesabling "use media based catalogs" in the programm options, but unfortunatelly building the catalog still fails with the same error.

I still don't quite understand what files are missing because I copied all BKF files that were touched when the backup was run. But I have to admit that I was a little naive never trying to recover _after_ copying the backup files to a different media.

Is there any chance of recovering files from the backup files without prior building of the catalog?
Or maybe the link to the non-available files can be manipulated, i.e. deleted manually?

Many thanks
Stefan.

[Ken_Putnam]

I still don't quite understand what files are missing because I copied all BKF files that were touched when the backup was run

You need all of the BKF files in that media set since the last Overwrite job started a new "append family:"

Is there any chance of recovering files from the backup files without prior building of the catalog?


Not using BackupExec.  You must select data to restore from the catalog on that media server

A data recover company MAY be able to help, but no guaratees

[sstrobl · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the help.

I'm a little disappointed that Veritas hasn't made that more clear with using the APPEND mechanism.
Fortunatelly there hasn't been any data loss in my case.

Regards
Stefan.