Recovering images from tape

[Luis001]

I have media that shows images but no available data. For example in media device management > Media > Pool Name , there are 72 images showing, frozen media, 0 valid images. I thought that by freesing the media it would not allow any data expiration. This kind of seems true since it is showing that there are 72 images but not so much since it is showing 0 valid images. How do I move tha data from that media to another with a longer retention. Nothing shows up in the catalog search.

Thanks!

[mph999 · Accepted solution]

First, write protect the media physically.

Freezing media does NOT stop data expiration.  It does stop the media expiring until it is unfozen, but this is not what it should be used for.

Media should never be frozen manually - personally, I wish the ability to manually freeze media should be removed, as too often it is mis-used.

If you don't want media to expire, increase the retention time.

All you need to do, is unfreeze the media (it will then expire, hence why I said write protect it), move it to a volume pool other than scratch (if it has gone back to scratch) and then import it, like this.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH72429

Martin

[Stumpr2]

When the import is finished the images will have the same expiration retention level starting with the import date. This gives you plenty of time to use bpexpdate to extend it even further as needed.

If you dont want any new backup jobs to use the tape, then suspend it.

bpmedia:
  -freeze|-unfreeze|-suspend|-unsuspend -m <media_id> [-h <hostname>] [-v]
 

[watsons]

The concept in Netbackup is:

Catalog data is the main reference point to whether a data is expired or not. In your case, this tape is marked by catalog as EXPIRED and no longer has valid images.

But when a tape is frozen (for a reason), Netbackup would not be able to write any further into the tape, so whatever stored in that tape remains intact and would not be overwritten until you unfreeze the tape. 

In this case, leave the tape as FROZEN and try importing the data again, that should re-create the images and you can then run bpexpdate command to extend the expiration period, and make a duplicate copy if it's deemed important.