need to restore tape but don't know media id

[Asheley]

I have two DLT tapes that I need to restore the data from and the media id's are missing and I can't find them in the header of the tape. Veritas Netbackup won't recognize the tape without a media id. Any suggestions?

[Sheriff Andy]

Asheley,

Welcome to the forums.

Are you saying that the label is not on the tapes?

What kind of library do you have? What is your OS?

[Asheley]

These are tapes that have been given to us by a client and they don't know what is on them. I don't know what program was used (if any) to do the backup. They are assuming there are emails on the tape and that is what they want us to restore. I can't do the restore because I don't know the media id.

[Sheriff Andy]

These are DLT tapes then. Still don't know what OS controls your library and your tape drives.

Assuming you have hpux.

You could mount the tape, then;

# mt -f /dev/rmt/?mn rew
# mt -t /dev/rmt/?mn fsf 1
# tar -tvf /dev/rmt/?mn

[Asheley]

The OS on the machines with the tape drives is Windows 2000 server. I have tried using media merge to examine the header and find the media id, but I can't find anything useful. I also have access to machines with Unix operating systems. Should I try the commands you gave earlier? (bear in mind, not much experience with this)

[Sheriff Andy]

I would really try and find out what kind of software the client used to backup the email. A lot of unknowns it seems.

If you wish to have a look from the UNIX side, I would recommend a Unix admin help you out with it.

[avik]

"vmoprcmd -d" is the command to find out the recorded media in netbackup.

The external & recorded media id should be same before you can perform any operation with these medias.

You will have to import the backup images from media before you could start a restore.

hope this helps..

[avik]

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/245124.htm

http://support.veritas.com/docs/245195

[Ken wanderer]

Hello,
Sorry for all the questions,

Are these two tapes from the original machine?
Are the tapes spanned or single backups?

Does anything happen when you inventory the tapes? Errors.
Catalog the tapes?

Are the tapes listed in the tape libraries?

Attach the error message.

Spanned disks can not be restored from another tape unit or machine.
Did you recently update Veritas?

[avik]

Backup spanned across multiple tapes can definitely be restored.