recovering BE12.5 tape data on a machine with BE12

[jantje_vlaam]

One of my customers has SBS 2008 with BE 12,5 for SBS2008 and a LTO 2 Tapedrive. Whenever i use the tapedrive to restore data, the machine hangs. Now i want to recover the data on the tape (made with BE12.5 on the SBS2008 server) on a machine with SBS2003 and BE 12.

When i do an iventory it sees the tape. When i want to catalog it, it is in an unrecognized dataformat and it want's to format it.

Is it possible to restore data on a SBS 2003 server with BE12 from a tape written with BE12.5?
Could the tape be damaged?
Should i install BE12.5?
 

[CraigV]

Hi,

Data backed up in BEWS 12.5 cannot be restored with BE 12.0.
My suggestion would be to go to the website and download a trial version of BEWS 12.5 (if you don't already have this), and then do the restore that way. once done, you can load up the licensed version of BEWS that you have for your client.

Cheers!

PS: http://www.symantec.com/offer?a_id=51791

[Colin_Weaver]

Firstly the format of on tape data was only really changed when tape encryption was introduced so although we have probably not tested reading a 12.5 tape with 12.0 I would expect it to work.

However gut feeling is that your customer's tape or tape drive is a bit suspect (i.e. damaged media, head alignment or similar) as they should be able to restore the data on the drive/system that did the backup.
Have you tried to read a second tape from a different days job?
When they run their backup jobs, is verify enabled and are any errors reported by the verify?

[jantje_vlaam · Accepted solution]

Update,

they gave me the wrong tape, this was a tape made with another backup program.

The correct tape was easily recovered using an older version of backup exec.