Start catalogues and media sets from zero

[Stefano_Gianfra]

Hi,

My catalogs seem to be unusable. If I select an older file to restore for test purposes I get the message "Catalog Driver: Folder or file not found." As I repeatedly deleted files on disks (its an RB2D environment with four Disks) and within catalogues I guess I should start from scratch. I found a document, where Ken Putnam says:

If you really want to get rid of all your old catalogs and backup info, you also need to shut down Backup Exec, then delete the contents of your catalog folder and B2D files.

Does that mean that I have delete the whole content of Backup Exec\data folder AND run Beutility and goto "Recover database" and select "Begin with new database", as it is discussed in the cited document?

Finally I would like to have a fresh catalogue, i.e. no restore options are available and my media set named "B2D" is empty and and numbering for media names is starting from one (B2D000001 etc.)

Thanks a lot for a clarification.

Regards,
Stefano

[I_T_Guy]

to remove the old catalogs, stop the BE services, and delete the contents of "catalogs" folder under C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\.

If you follow what Ken Putnam said and recover your database from base then you will have a completly blank database resulting in loosing all your job configuration, selection list etc.

[RahulG · Accepted solution]

Does that mean that I have delete the whole content of Backup Exec\data folder AND run Beutility and goto "Recover database" and select "Begin with new database", as it is discussed in the cited document? No you dont have to use Beutility no

No you dont need to run Beutility as you dont need to configure every thing from the scratch .

All you job and configuration is stored in the BE database and ideally the database file location is in Data folder, unless you have you backup exec database on a full blow SQL server.

All the resrtore selection are generated by the catalogs which are in the catalogs directory . so if you just rename the exisiting one to old and create new catalog folder , you will get a blank selection list and as in you run new backup the catalog will be written to the new catalog directory . If you want to restore from a old backup set i.e bkf file . you would need to run a catalog to generate the selection list for the data in that backup set .

Hope this helps

[Stefano_Gianfra]

Thanks to you both, good information, that point is clear to me now. I renamed catalogue folder and now my selection list for restores is empty and will be build again.

RahuIG, you made an interesting point, which is just something I was wondering about: When I setup BE I was asked to setup an SQL instance as well, and I thought all of these informations like catalogues, media id etc. were stored in that database. Now I learned that catalogues are stored separately in file system and that there is a data folder with addtional BE database. What is stored in local BE database and what purpose has SQL database?

Thanks and regards,
Stefano

[AmolB]

BE database stores Jobs, Policies, Media set information and all the settings applied.

[RahulG]

The sql databases stores all the configuration like you jobs ,polices ,selection lists, media set , device infomormation,login accounts etc. Incase if your backup exec server crashed you can recover all the jobs by restoring the database (if backup taken via sql agent) or if you have a copy of data and the catalog folder you can get all the information . The backup of catalog folder is necessary  as it speeds up the restore process . Incase if you dont have a backup of catalog folder you would need to catalog all the tapes and bkf files 1st , which might take a long time and then you can perform the restore.

[Stefano_Gianfra]

Allright, everything's clear now. Thanks a lot!