Restore out sequence?? 1

[Pristle]

I have a dilemma where I have a wrecked system on my hands, the 10-month old hard drive appears to have disintegrated internally. The GM took half the tape set away with him over the Christmas break, the staff responsible for tape control thought nothing of it and started putting in the remaining tapes at random.

I now have an assortment of tapes with an assortment of data on them.

The largest and most comprehensive body of data appears to be on Media Info BB78, of which I have 2 tapes, Seq#1 and Seq#2. When restoring from Seq#1 all seems well, without the request for any other tapes, yet I expect more data than I'm seeing.

If I try restore Seq#2 it asks for Seq#1 and then refuses to accept it. My assumption is that they're from two sessions?

When I've then run a "merge" on Seq#2, it requests Seq#3, which does not appear to exist.

I'm desperate to find a solution.

The GM has agreed that cutting budgetary corners wasn't really the best move when ordering the original system and the new system being ordered should have mirrored drives at least.

JdV

 

[Pristle]

Sorry for the double post, but I forgot my plea:

Is then any way to circumvent the "sequence" issue?

TIA

 

[arcagent]

Hi Pristle

Try doing this.

Bring up ARCserve and run a MERGE job on both tapes. Access the UTILITIES section of ARCserve and choose the MERGE option.

When you select the merge option you should be able to select your tape to run a Merge job, which will scan the tape and repopulate the database with session information off the tape. If a backup has spanned multiple tape sequences then the Merge job should prompt you for the second sequence (tape). See if that runs. IF a successful merge job can be run on these tapes, then you should be able to use RESTORE BY SESSION or RESTORE BY TREE (in the restore modes for arcserve) to select which data you want back from tape.

Another possibility is to put the second tape in the drive and do a RESTORE BY MEDIA, which should simply dump the contents of the tape to your desired destination.

Let us know how you're doing, and we will try to help.

~Arcagent

 

[Pristle]

Thanks for the response ~Arcagent.

I have followed the steps you suggest. I have two particular tapes that I'm having some trouble with, both named BTAPE, both carry the ID BB78 but have sequence numbers, 1 and 2.

When I restore using the "by media" option, Seq 1 runs through and restores a certain amount of data. I does not request a second tape.

However when I attempt the "restore by media" process using Seq 2, I get a request coming back asking for Seq1. Inserting the previously mentioned tape has no effect on this request.

When I attempt a "merge" on Seq 2, it comes with a request for Seq 3. I have been through all the tapes from the client and cannot locate a Seq 3.

I'm in a quandary. I'm getting no response from the CA phone helpdesk either.

Pristle

 

[davidmichel]

Do a Scan on both tapes to find out the number of sessions, then restore each session.

Example:
tape seq. # 1 - has session 1 and the begining of session 2.
tape seq. # 2 - has the rest of session 2, and the begining of session 3.

A restore of session 1 would not ask for the seq. #2 tape.
A restore of session 2 would ask for seq. #1 tape and then it would go to the seq.#2 tape.
A restore of session 3 would start on seq.#2 and then go to the seq.#3 tape.

 

[Pristle]

Arduous I know but I found I had to SCAN each SESSION, i.e. uncheck "All Sessions" in a bid to find all SESSIONs to MERGE.

The 2nd tape in the particular tape set I was having and issue with, would only SCAN from SESSION 27! As I said arduous. And then it didn't all have the data I was hoping for......

Selecting SCAN "All Sessions" requests the previous SEQUENCE tape.


P.