DLT

[Bill Wheat]

I had a data loss last week involving a user folder on a server. We use Backup Exec on a Novell 4.11 server. Somewhere along the line, our backup was changed to incremental for every day. So far I have been able to salvage 7 files from this folder, but there are about 70 that are still missing. I have purchased Linux because I read that using Unix, you can access tapes to extract data. I can access the tape using a tar command which makes the tape respond but then I get a "Cannot read, Cannot allocate memory" error. Does anyone know of a way that I can extract data from a tape?

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Bill,
this should be truth that you can access tape in unix at low level - with 'dd' command. This command is able to read 'image' of the data from the tape.
But I think that backupexec uses its own format to store data (data layout) thus to open archive in this 'image' you need backupexec application. I guess that tar displaying this message simply because data format in the archive is not tar-compatible
Eugeny

[Vincent Fleming]

It sounds like you've lost the "full" backup that the incrementals are based upon.

If this is the case, and few of the files have been changed, then you're in trouble. An Incremental only backs up files that have changed since the last Full backup, or the last Incremental. IF they haven't changed, then they don't get backed up.

You need to find that Full backup.

Good luck,

Vince

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
You write in description "incremental for every day", is there no full backup running (perhaps once a week). Every incremental must refer to a full backup. Is it possible to list sessions from the Backup Exec database to find the last full backup and restore this first.

[Rajesh G. Ghone]

Hi,

You are taking backup with backupexec which must be writing with their own format,so obviously if you try to use tar or any other backup utility other then backupexec to read the content definately it wont read & it will give you errors.& second but the most important thing is that you have to make an habbit of taking full backup once in a week so that you dont loose more data.

Regards,
Rajesh G.