How do I replace tapes at the end of large archive?

[Francis_Favorin]

I have a large continuous archive spanning 85 AIT-5 tapes that contains multiple backup sets (all one media set). The last 4 tapes need to be replaced, since they were recalled by Sony. (They are still readable.) What I would like to do is an exact byte-for-byte copy of the 4 old tapes to 4 new ones and then move the bar code labels from old to new. This way Backup Exec would not notice that the tapes had been replaced. Is this possible? Is there another way?

What I'm not going to be able to do is restore all 85 of those tapes to disk anywhere and create a new backup. I suppose I could take the backup sets starting with the last one on the last good tape that spans onto the first bad tape plus the other backup sets on the bad tapes and duplicate them using a duplicate job, but then I would not have a seamless archive anymore. Suggestions?

[Francis_Favorin]

Any ideas?

[Ken_Putnam]

I'm  having a real probem wrapping my head around a single backup set that spans 85 tapes (of any capacity)

I would be doing periodic fulls spaced bewteen INCRs or DIFFs


That being said,  Sounds like your idea is the only one that makes any sense at all

[Larry_Fine]

Having an 85 tape spanning situation sounds risky to me too.  If the tapes are already written and presumably would only be read in the case of restores, how big a deal is the recall?  Is Sony implying that these tapes will lose their memory too soon or something disasterous?  How much do you anticipate restoring over the life of the tapes?

[Francis_Favorin]

Ken,

Thanks for the reply. To clarify, it's not a backup. It's an archive. I.e., it is not periodic snapshots of changing data, it is the one and only copy of data that is not in active use anymore (actually we have two separate redundant archives). We have to maintain archives of all the data we collect for 7 years, and we collect a lot of data. The reason the archive spans tape is so we don't waste a bunch of space at the end of each tape (we have some large files).

So there is no way to duplicate tapes byte-for-byte? If I found a 3rd party program that did this, would it work? I.e., could I then swap in the exact duplicate and "fool" Backup Exec? Would I run into trouble with some unique ID stored in MIC? Does BE use MIC at all? I know there are hardware solutions that claim to duplicate tapes.

If I decide to go the route of duplicating the backup sets at the end of the archive, will I have a problem if I just remove the "bad" tapes from the robot once their backup sets are duplicated onto good tapes? Will BE crash/choke/etc. if it gets to the end of a tape and can't find the rest of the backup set?

[Ken_Putnam]

OK,   I still think I'd be doing periodic Fulls, tho

So there is no way to duplicate tapes byte-for-byte?

Not using BackupExec.  If you could find a product that would do this "off-line", I don't think that BackupExec would have a problem with the new tapes, since it uses the tape headers to identify tapes, AFAIK

[Francis_Favorin]

What's the best way to remove the bad tapes once I've duplicated them? Move them to Retired Media?

[Ken_Putnam]

If you copy them off-line, I would think you would not  have to do anything.  Just replace the  old tape with the new

(But again, I've never done this or heard of anyone who has - May  be worth opening an Incident with Symantec since this involves legally mandated data retention)

[Francis_Favorin]

Yeah, I mean if I duplicate the backup sets instead. I don't think the exact tape copy is likely at this point. I have to get this solved ASAP. At the very least, I'd have to buy software, install it and the tape robot drivers, since it likely won't work with the BE drivers. Then there might be issues with BE getting confused when I unistall the drivers. Too many potential headaches.