recreating old catalogs

[Dale_Allingham]

I am tasked with trying to recreate catalogs from old DLT tapes that were in the tape library that was used to backup the companies data. They want to be able to restore old data if necessary and maybe because of regulations as well. They now have a new tape library with LTO tapes. Still have the old tape library. Don't know the brand. No identifying stickers. Looks like a clone library. Since the tapes were not marked I have to go through hundreds of tapes, inventory them and catalog them. Of course some files span more than 1 tape and I have no way of knowing beforehand which ones span to what. Does anyone have a way they cataloged some old tapes. I turned off "storage media based catalogs" with the hope that this will allow every tape to be cataloged as much as possible. I guess the catalog will still fail if the file (like Exchange Information Stores) span more than one tape. Don't know if the tape will tell me which tape it is looking for or not. I guess I will be able to back afterwards and recatalog the spanned tapes by turning back on "storage media based catalogs".
Any information on others experiences would be helpful.
Thanks

[Rucha_Abhyankar]

Hi Dale,

You want to restore old data that resides on old tapes now right?

Did you run an inventory and catalog operation?


Try these steps:

1.Stop all Backup Exec services.

2. Rename the "Catalogs" folder to .old

3. Uncheck the "Storage media based catalogs" option.

4.Start all Backup Exec services and then try cataloging the tapes.

Hope it helps!

[Dale_Allingham]

The IT dept. has not been asked to restore data today but we are supposed to know what is on the tapes so we can restore if necessary. This is especially true of the Exchange Information Store. I did stop the services and renamed the catalog file to catalog.old. I am in the process of cataloging each tape. Of course this takes a long time. I am getting mostly failed catalogs because it appears that most large files have spanned more than 1 tape.
When I look under Restore and under media view, I see 6 out of 11 tapes that have been cataloged so far that showed having a byte count. Some of the tapes don't show any byte count and don't show up.
One of the tapes that does have a positive byte count but not in the media view under Restore shows 20 files and 1 directory when I look at the job history.
Most if not all of the failed catalogs show a00084fa - one or more pieces of media in the media family being cataloged has not been inventoried. Mo objects on these media may be cataloged.
On some of the media that do show up, the Information Store has a red check mark next to the file. Seems to me that this means it is incomplete but could be written back to the hard drive if I wanted.
I am wondering if this exercise in cataloging is going to result in useful information. Am I going to be able to look in some file being generated and determine what tapes go together in a set so that I can retrieve information needed. Can I use what I am getting? If there is a pdf that addresses this that would be helpful. If it is in the admin guide, where would I look?
Thanks everyone.

I spoke to Veritas tech support and the method we are using is apparently the best way to approach the project. It is just going to take a lot of time and not everything will be able to be cataloged as I had hoped. to may files spanning more than one tape and have to catalog everything before might know the before or after tape.Message was edited by:
Dale Allingham