cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Dump multiple backup sets from a single tape to subfolders?

tammer42
Level 3

Hello,

I'm currently running Backup Exec 2010R3, and I've run into an issue. I'm attempting to restore many old DAT tapes to a hard disk. The problem is that these tapes each contain dozens of backup jobs of the same original directories. Ideally I'd want Backup Exec to create a folder named with the date of each backup job, and restore the full content of each backup to these separate folders.

the "preserve tree" option keeps the directory structure of the original machine, but doens't differentiate between backup sets. This causes files to be either skipped or overwritten, while I need each version of each file restored. While I could restore each backup job manually, this would take far too long considering the amount of tapes I've got to cover.

Doing a duplicate-to-disk isn't a solution either, since this leaves me with a .BKF file that I'd have to restore again, and the files need to be immediately accessible without any restore software.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

As discussed if you want to dio this it will be manual and you will end up with lot sof copies of different versions of the same data - no Backup Product is really designed for this situation so it will be a very manual process. Traditionally Backup products are designed to reteuive data against a point in time (whether that be all the data or just part of it). Restoring from multiple points in time whislt maintaining the different file versions is not really part of traditional backup products.

If you want this facility going forwards then it is the sort of thing archiving products (Such as Enterprise vault) might be able to achieve or possibly somethign like DLO that maintaisn file revisions. Both of these products have end user front end consoles. However you would need ot do some reasearch abouth what is best for you and there may be other products available from both Symantec and other vendors that better meet your requirements.

View solution in original post

11 REPLIES 11

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi,

 

You should be able to get around this by doing a redirected restore to another folder.

You could create folders based on the dates/tape names etc. in Windows and then just redirect to that. When restoring it would keep the folder structure, as long as you kept the Preserve folder tree option ticked.

 

Thanks!

RahulG
Level 6
Employee

You would need to perform a redirect restore to achive this .. Catalog all the tape you have ,you can select each backup set and perform a redirect restore to different folder .

tammer42
Level 3

Thanks, but I'm not sure if I understand how this solves the issue. I'm aware of the redirect restore option, however the problem is each individual tape contains dozens of backup sets. When I view my selections by media while setting up a restore job, beneath each tape is a set of folders with a date and timestamp. These folders aren't part of the original server's directories but rather a list of individual backup sets compiled by backup exec.

Ideally I'd want the restored directory structure to exactly match what I see in this view in backup exec. However, when I do a redirected restore job backup exec only preserves the directory tree of the original system, which means that all the duplicate files across the different backup sets are either skipped or overwritten. Another possible solution would be to have duplicate files be restored and renamed with a timestamp, however in the restore job general options I only see the possibility to have files skipped or overwritten.

Thanks again for your help!

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Unless there is a specific reason to have the data itself back on disk, why not just duplicate the DAT tapes into a B2D folder on that drive, and let the catalog take care of what data is where?

tammer42
Level 3

The data needs to be readily and immediately accessible to users lacking Backup Exec, NT Backup and technical knowlegdge beyond browsing shared folders.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Suppose you backup C:\DirA on 01/01/11, 02/01/11, 03/01/11 and so on.  Re-direct the restores of each of the backups to different directories, each with a timestamp and you have the following:

D:\backup - 010111\DirA

D:\backup - 020111\DirA

D:\backup - 030111\DirA

......

The backup - xxxxxx directories are what you specify in your re-directed restores.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...well, unless you want to overwrite the data all the time, then you'd need to create folders based on tape name/date etc. to restore too. That would give you multiple copies of files with the data from each tape located there-in...and multiple copies of files at different dates/times.

tammer42
Level 3

Thanks, this is the solution I'll probably end up using, I was just hoping that there'd be a more automated way than restoring each backup, since I've got 40 tapes each with over a dozen backups!

tammer42
Level 3

Thanks, as noted above this is what I'll probably end up doing, but do you know if there's a way to automate these restores so I can run a whole tape at once rather than redirecting every backup set?

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...no way to automate restores unfortunately. You might want to head on over to the Ideas section and add that in.

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

As discussed if you want to dio this it will be manual and you will end up with lot sof copies of different versions of the same data - no Backup Product is really designed for this situation so it will be a very manual process. Traditionally Backup products are designed to reteuive data against a point in time (whether that be all the data or just part of it). Restoring from multiple points in time whislt maintaining the different file versions is not really part of traditional backup products.

If you want this facility going forwards then it is the sort of thing archiving products (Such as Enterprise vault) might be able to achieve or possibly somethign like DLO that maintaisn file revisions. Both of these products have end user front end consoles. However you would need ot do some reasearch abouth what is best for you and there may be other products available from both Symantec and other vendors that better meet your requirements.