Restore from Exchange 2003 from Tape

[tainted24]

What is the best practice for restoring a single users mailbox/folder from Tape backup?

Currently running Backup Exec 2010 R3, Exchange 2003 server.

I've completed the full backup using GRT and go to the restore job.

I'm able to drill down to the individual mailbox/folder that I want to restore, however i'm a little confused as to how everything works.  I tried restoring using the Wizard but i believe the 'stage' path was set to the local media server which doesn't have enough room to house it.  

Do i change the staging area in tools > Options > Restore > (GRT Path)

Is there any easier way to do this without having to stage the entire mail store to a local drive (assuming a 1TB external attached to the server will work)

1.  Navigate to Restore Wizard

2.  Select the restore directory on the mail server and select the last full backup completed (to the specific user)

3.  Test the 'Restore Credentials' (checks out fine)

4.  Give the job name

5.  Select the tape drive from Data source selection to restore from

6.  Overwrite the file on disk

7.  Leave automatic recreate and restore over existing messages and folders unchecked.  Restore all trans logs checked.  Path on Exchange server for temporary storage of log and patch files defaulted to C:\TEMP.  Left Dismount database before restore UNCHECKED.  Left Commit and Mount after restore checked.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

To restore an e-mail we have to mount the copy of the  information store.

We cannot mount an information store from tape so it has to be staged to an NTFS disk to mount it

As such to restore one e-mail from tape you need a staging area big enough to hold the whole information store.

Best practice is to have enough disk space on the media server to do this.

Very best practice is do your backups to disk as then you don't have to stage to restore. if you need to, duplicate to tape for complete DR (recovery of a whole information store does not stage) Doing backups to disk does of course need enough space to keep a few days backups on disk.

If you get stuck with not enough space to stage from tape then at least one customer plugged in a USB disk formatted to NTFS (with 512byte sector size) and used the USB disk as a staging area. This was kind of an emergency workaround