Restore list after tape overwriten

[User999]

Hi,

When a tape has got overwriten, the restore selection (grouped by date) which falls under the tape in BE will be dissapeared? Or it will still be shown in the restore list, but not able to restore?

Thanks.

[CraigV]

Hi,

The tape is gone...so are the catalogs etc. and data on it. You won't see anything past the date it was written too again.

Thanks!

[User999]

Hi Craig,

When do we need to run the catalog? Do we need to run this manually? Or there is some setting to it?

From this link:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH33576

It says:

The information contained in the catalog includes, but is not limited to:

• Tape number/label/name (something to identify that tape from all others)
• Date and time of the backup
• Type of backup
• What directories/files were backed up
   

So without cataloging it, the restore will not "see" the file in the tape?

Thanks.

[CraigV]

Not necessarily. If the tape was last used within the 90 days that BE retains catalogs for before purging them, you should simply put the tape into the drive, right-click it and select the Restore option.

If outside of that, then you need to run a Catalog job first, and then restore.

[User999]

Hi Craig,

So there is a 90 days setting? What if the tape was not used within 90 days? How would we know when to run...

I am referring to robotic library with alot of tapes.

Or the Catalog is only required if we bring in new tape which previously not run by existing BE and Backup Device?

Thanks.

[Kiran_Bandi]

The setting is "Truncate Catalogs after", which you can find under Tools --> Options --> Settings --> Catalog.

This option reduces the size of the catalogs considerably. After the catalogs have been truncated, the files and directories cannot be restored unless the media is recataloged. 

Or the Catalog is only required if we bring in new tape which previously not run by existing BE and Backup Device?

Catalog operation is required on a tape, which was used already with BE and have some valid data written by BE on it. When you try to restore data from that tape, you can see all the contents on that tape and can select the files to be restored. If catalog for that tape is not available with the media server, you will be prompted to run a catalog operation on that tape. 

Simply, If you don't need to restore data from a tape, you do not need to run catalog on that.

Hope this is clear....

[CraigV]

OK, so this is the scenario:

1. You back up data in February and put the tape aside.

2. It is never used again! Kind of like a monthly backup.

3. You need to restore data today. Because 90 days has passed (default time limit which you can set in BE), the catalog has been purged from BE itself. You then need to catalog the tape, which will make the data available for restore.

If you don't, and you try restore, you're going to get an error stating the tape needs to be catalogged.

[User999]

Hi,

So if i do not check the option, meaning it will continuosly catalog the backup.

Meaning to say logically, the catalog retention should be longer than media set overwrite period as well?

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

No, leave it at 90 days unless you have a very high level of logging on your job logs. This deletes old catalogs which can see your HDD run out of disk space if you're generating very large files for instance.

Running a Catalog doesn't take all that long, maybe an hour or so, so you can leave it as is. Obviously don't overwrite the tape or the data you might want to restore would have been deleted!

[Colin_Weaver]

Note: If you overwite the media than Backup Exec should remove the old catalog from the system (and ignore any cataog retenion setting ) as no point in keep a catalog for something that you cannot restore. Of course a new catalog will be created for the data that you wrote to the media whilst overwriting the original data.