Virtual tape Scanner issue 1

[fpastano]

Ok here the details:

We have tapes from 1999-2000 that for legacy reason MUST be read only one time.
There is no index stored of the tapes and the only things we know is that they are made with Legato Networker.

They choose to use DD to copy the tape in a raw way to a disk area.

the DD create two files of 32kb and the other files of 1gb.

like:

LABEL.part01 32k
LABEL.part02 32k
LABEL.part03 1G
LABEL.part04 1G
LABEL.part05 1G
etc...

Than, in order to make a scanner of the tape on the disk area they create a virtual device with Filestreamer.
(Filestreamer create a virtual tape).

Then we try to make a dd from the disk area to the virtual device using the block size of 65536 (if I make a scanner -v i give me this record size)

After I've copied the files on the virtual tape I launch the scanner but:

He give me the actual label of the tape, so the data is consistent, but the he try to make a fsf2 and give me the error message that no more file are on the tape.

I understand that probably is connected with the file mark that legato write after the label but I do not understand how can i skip this part and let the scanner do is work.

Ok is not a normal issue but any help will be apreciated ^_^

Thanks in advance

Flavio
PS:
The actual environment is Windows2003 with legato 7.4.
the original tapes are SDLT

 

[605]

There is no need to copy the tapes. Just proceed as follows:
- Write-protect the tapes
- Install a compatible tape drive
- Use the scanner command to repopulate the metadata
"scanner -iv device_name"
- If there is anything else missing (clients, pools etc.), NW will tell you

Every tape drive must write a "Double FMK" (2 consecutive FMKs) at the end of the write process. This is done by the firmware already. If the scanner command finds such "Logical End-of-Tape", the media has (accidentally) been relabeled.
In general, you used the same procedure - you just did not know the meaning of the double FMK .

 

[fpastano]

I 605, thanks for the fast answer, I've missed the point in my explanation... so is my fault. the data are from 1999-2000 and around 30% of them are damaged (from a test we have done last year) this was caused from bad conservation, dust places and so on, the media are also shipped from oversea, sometime the original sites are not existing anymore and so on. Now the company was "incorporated" in a bigger one and this new one have different tape policy etc..

In short terms I need to copy the data to new storage media for data preservation BUT because the media tape are so damaged I have the limit to read the media only one time as explained in the thread before.

Sorry for my short explanation before.
(If was just technical it was easy, but politics is also involved)

SO to copy the old media (no index, legato version unknown) to a new storage I've thinked to scanner and then a | uart something but it seems not a solution, so we went to the raw copy, and here we had the problem I'd showed you before.

Now I can actually changed what we are doing but "teoretically" the tape must be readed only one time and copied on new media (and of course be readable).

^_^

Sorry and thanks again for the help

Flavio

 

[605]

Using the offset parameters for the scanner command
-f file_mark_#
-r record_#
you should be able to restart the scan process beyond a bad spot. However, you will not be able to bypass the double FMK issue.

Worst case, you can ask a data recovery company (like Ontrack) to recover the obviously corrupt data. No idea what they will charge you, though. Good luck.

 

[fpastano]

Hi 605,

Thanks a lot.

Strangely enough if I try the scanner with the file position
-f it give to me the some error, but if i make the -r 1 option "scanner -r 1 -m device_name" he actually give me a warning (unexpected file number, wanted 1 got 2) BUT he go on with the scanner, and just now it ended fine.

Now I'll try to make a directed restore from the virtual tape and I let you know.

Best Rgds

Flavio

 

[fpastano]

OK it seems to work, but with the restore from virtual tape I receive same errors, basically because, the Graphycal interface get the some error from the scanner without the -r option.

So I'm thinking that for a restore ( We think that we will receive 1 or 2 request every year, we can use the UART feature:


scanner -r 1 -S 2465024746 \\.\Tape2 -x uasm -rv ????

basically restoring the data directly from the scanner, but how can i tell the UART to relocate the data to a specific directory??

I've googled a little and I've found nothing also in the man pages and on the command references there is not about relocation of the data...

I know you already have helped me a lot, can you please give me some hint about that?'

Thanks in advance

Flavio

 

[605]

To relocate to another directory, use UASM's "-m" option. As usual, the uasm manpage lists the correct syntax.