How to Restore backups from 6 months ago.

[Sam_Dazz]

We are using BackupExec 10d. We have 2 sets of tapes. Week1 thru Week 5 which are Offsite tapes. Other set is OnSite tapes which rotates in a 4 week rotation. We send Week1 thru Week4 offsite for a month time period and Week5 goes Offsite for 6 months period.

My questions:

1) Why I can't see all the backups from 6 months. I can go back only 5 weeks to restore from selections?

2) If I've a tape from 6 month pool, How I can restore data from there?

3) How I can see What data is on the tape? Please show briefly.

Thanks

Message Edited by Sam Dazz on 04-12-200711:26 AM

[Ken_Putnam]

1)   Do you have database trimming turned on?  This will remove any entries older that the specified time See page 437 in the Admin Guide

You can download one from http://support.veritas.com/docs/279401

2)  If the tape no longer appears in the Restore Selections pane, insert the tape, inventory and catalog it

3)  Once #2 above is done, you should be able to see the data in the Retore Selections pane

[Sam_Dazz]

* What is a Tape Catalog?

* Why do we need it and What good it does for us?

* How you can perform this? I assume you can do it by Right Clicking the actual tape, and select Catalog, am I right?

* It asks for a password, which password does it needs? Can we skip this password thing or not?

[Ken_Putnam]

insert the tape

From the Devices Tab, right click the drive\inventory

when that completes, right click\Catalog

[Sam_Dazz]

1. What is a Tape Catalog?

2. Why do we need it and What good it does?

3. I inventoried the tape and I can see it in the pane, but when I try to Right Click it and Catalog it, it asks for a password, which password does it needs? Can we skip this password thing or not?

Can you please answer these questions, Thanks a lot.

[Ken_Putnam]

I inventoried the tape and I can see it in the pane, but when I try to Right Click it and Catalog it, it asks for a password, which password does it needs? Can we skip this password thing or not?

Sounds like the job was create with Password Protection.  Each job can have it's own password.  if you do not know what that password is, then there is no way to force BackupExec to read that tape volume

You MAY be able to take the tape to a DataRecovery Service, but even they may not be able to help.

if the data you need is really critical, it may be worth opening an incident with Symantec

[pie8ter]

Ken,

Can you please tell us where is this password settings for the backups?   So that we won't me this costly mistake.

Thanks

[Hywel_Mallett]

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@Sam Dazz wrote:

1. What is a Tape Catalog?

Luckily I already answered this somewhere else. Have a look at What are catalogs?

To check the password protection settings, go in to the properties of a job, and under Device and Media there is a Media protection checkbox.