Help! I need a Utility for restore of non-Windows backups on Windows Server 2008

[David Escarraz]

I have files backed up to LTO tape from a Unix/Linux system (or possibly other legacy systems) and I would like to restore them on my Windows Server 2008 system. Does anyone know of a utility that will facilitate this?

Windows Server 2008 does not support assigning the tape drive to a device designator, so I can't even find a way to simply copy the tape to disk which is probably all I need.

I also have tried several Windows centric solutions such as ntbackup and Backup Exec that can see the drive and read the tape headers, but they only seem to be willing to work with their own tape formats.

I can't believe that nothing like this exists. I suppose that building either a seperately bootable or virtual Linux system would work, but I'd hate to go to all that trouble just to get at a few files, but at this point I will entertain any even semi-reasonable workaround solution.

The only tape drive I have is the internal LTO-4 in my DL580 G5 running Window Server 2008 standard.

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

David you will need to use the same software you used to backup for restoring this files. You can also try pluging the LTO4 drive back to the linux box and joining your 2008 server to the domain so you can restore thouse files there.

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[David Escarraz]

I can't move the drive since it is internal.

I don't have any other LTO drives.

I don't have the system the tapes were made on, nor can I get access to one like it without buying or building one.


I have found many free utlities to read virtually any backup format ever devised, they just expect the drive to be mountable to a device handle - ie. a drive letter - which can no longer be done in Windows Server 2008.