RE: [OT] Backup Tape issue...

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ian,

just a couple of thoughts, and some of this may very definately be
out-of-date info, as I've long since given up on tape-based backup
solutions...

However, in my past experience, I have learned the following:...

Backup Exec's tape format *is* the NT backup utility tape format  - i.e.
they should be interchangeable... That certainly used to be the case a few
years ago, but I couldn't swear that it still is...

Whenever I had incompatability issues just like you describe, 9 times out
of
10, the problem traced back to compression... Some DAT drives support
hardware compression, some don't... Some DAT drives let you turn the H/W
compression on or off via a DIP switch, some let you control it via
software. Also, many (most?) backup utilities may have their own software
compression algorythms built-in, again usually optional...

What I found is that anything backed up up without any form of hardware or
software compression turned on was pretty much universally interchangeable.
However, the compression algorythms can (and did) vary between the
different
vendors (that applies to both hardware and software compression), so if it
was (say) backed up on a Quantum drive with Quantum's hardware compression
turned on, it may very well not be readable on a HP drive with HP's
compression routines... and so on.....

Worth looking into the compression settings to see if this might be your
problem....

Cheers.

Paul G.



>From: "Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>Subject: [ukha_d] [OT] Backup Tape issue...
>Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 11:56:42 -0000
>
>
>I have a DDS3 DAT tape, and don't know what aplication was used to
>write it...
>
>I have tried windows backup, and it aint that ;) any clues on how to
>identify what sort of backup is on a tape? are there any general
>analysis tools?
>
>I guess I could start downloading eval copies of backup exec,
>arcserve etc.. just wondering if there's an easier way.
>
>Backup was of a windows server running Sharepoint.
>

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