Windows 7 tape backup / restore

[rphillips42]

I have a new environment that consists of two windows 7 laptops sharing a single iSCSI connected tape drive (using Microsoft iSCSI intiator).  I also have a number of LTO 3/4 tapes that were created by a variety of other environments, one being NTBackup on a Windows XP setup and the other a tape library running on a Windows 2003 server.  I am looking for some software that will work on Windows 7 to allow me to restore these older tapes, I had hopes pinned on BackupExec but since I cannot install it on Windows 7 (other than the remote admin console part) this is a non-starter.  I have also tried alternative products but since they rely on the tapes having been created in their software to start this also is a non-starter.  I would prefer to use a known product (less training for the users) and really need some guidance about what Symantec products that may exist that will do what I need.

[CraigV]

Hi,

Backup Exec will read *.bfk files, so you have no issues with that. If the backup of the server was run with Backup Exec, you'd need Backup Exec itself.

There is unfortunately no alternative software from Symantec that will run on Windows 7 and allow you to read that data...most vendors have moved away from Windows 7 etc as media servers.

Thanks!

[rphillips42 · Accepted solution]

It appears the answer to the question is no.  Nor are there other third party software applications that allow me access to the data on these tapes.

I cannot mark your answer as the solution because it is not a solution.

My current solution involves setting up Windows XP Mode, running it in a VMWare virtual machine and running ntbackup to retrieve the data from the tapes that way.  A time consuming and laborious process but it does at least work.