restore question

[HutchMD]

When restoring a directory from say, lastnights backups. Its a simple 400MB restore. But the restore seems to take forever as it does this reading first. The job details screen says Current kilobytes written: (insert any number here) Current files written: 0
Is this normal? Its like it reads the entire tape first, then restores

[Stumpr2]

What is the storage unit fragment size?

[HutchMD]

that I'm not sure of.

Basically what it looks like it's doing is this.

We took a backup of one folder that was 500GB
We arre trying to restore a small 400MB part of it.
It appears that NetBackup is reading the entire backup before it attempts the restore.

[CY]

Is this a NDMP backup/restore?  If so, it makes sense that "It appears that NetBackup is reading the entire backup before it attempts the restore".

To reduce the restore time for NDMP backup, you need to make sure DAR (direct access recovery) is enabled.  Read the NetBackup for NDMP guide, page 49 - Enabling or disabling DAR.

[J_H_Is_gone]

Restores take longer if you multiplex.

When doing the restore and it is giving you that count of kb's that is the number of kb's it has read through on the tape.  menaing it is looking through the tape for the file you asked.  now if you mulitplex it takes a little longer as it read the beginging of a 'batch' - is this part of my image - no - go find the net beging of a batch - is this my image - yes - read each file and see if it is the file I am looking for.

Backups with LOTS of small files will take longer then if you only have 1 or two large files.  some times my restores are quick because my file was near the begining. 

if you use checkpoints on your backups, the restore can be a bit quicker as it will know which check point it need to go to.

So yes that is normal - to me it lets me know that it is working its way thourgh the tape and is not stuck/hung for some reason.