Restore from hdd not knowing version

[Bjarne_Hamre]

Hi

I woke for a small IT-Consulting company in Norway.

Recently a customer came to us with an external hard drive with backup exec backups on.
The server that took the backups was unfortunately deleted (before we entered the picture).

How can I restore a database from this hard drive?

Do I need backup exec? If so, how do I check Backup Exec version?

Is there a program for just restoring?

Thanks in advance

[Colin_Weaver]

Check to confirm that it contains either BKF files or folders that start with IMG (or both) as if it does not contain these then it does not contain Backup Exec data

If it does contain Backup Exec data then you will need Backup Exec installed to restore (can initially use a trialware download from http://www.backupexec.com)

I would be tempted to copy the content of the disk to somewhere just for safety

Once you have installed Backup Exec you should be able to bring the disk storage back into the configuration and then run inventory and catalog job to find out what backup sets exist in the disk concerned.

As you mentioned databases you might need to be aware that whilst multiple different Backup Exec versions can support lots of different versison of SQL or Exchange etc, the restore has go go back to the same version of the database application so if they have updated their database technologies since the backup you will have some work to do to get a suitable location to restore to available.

[Colin_Weaver]

Of course if they encrypted their backup sets on disk you may not be able to restore anything , as my guess is if they just removed the server without checking they do not have the BEDB or manual records of any encryption keys or media passwords.

[Bjarne_Hamre]

Thank you for your help.
I have managed to get the desired backup set, but when I trie to restore it I get this error message
Job ended: 26. august 2015 at 15:22:45
Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe000848c - Unable to attach to a resource. Ensure that the selected resource exists and is online, and then try again. If the server or resource no longer exists, remove it from the selections.
Final error category: Resource Errors

I am trying to restore a database to a new server.

[Colin_Weaver]

It is probably trying to attach back to the original database locatiom/instance and that location or instance does not exist - for databases you need enough of the program components installed and running in order for a restore to work.

Note you have not told us what type of database you are working on (or if you have version matched the database being restored to the program and services running in the place you are restoring to.)

Also if you don't want to overwrite the current copy of the same database or are not restoring back to the original environment , you also need to look at redirection within the restore job.