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How to view data on DLT tape

B

Bodine

Member
I got a DLT drive on the cheap, and it came with a tape in it. How can I view the data on this tape (or any DLT tape for that matter)? Part of me is nosy, but I would also like to know for future reference for my own tapes.

I guess I knew the tape wouldn't have a Windows drive letter (I'm using W2K Server in this case), but I haven't used tapes before so I don't know what I'm doing. I downloaded a trial version of Genie Backup Manager v6, thinking that might show me what was on it, but if it does I can't find the setting.

Can anyone help a tape noob out?

Thanks.
 
What version of DLT is it? Which drive is this?
How are you connecting it? LVD SCSI?

You may have to load the tape driver for the device. Look in hardware manager and see if it's recognized. Make sure your SCSI driver is loaded as well.
Have you tried running ntbackup.exe to see if that sees the drive?
 
You need to know what software the data was written using and then use that exact same softare. If you don't know, try to guess where it came from and guess from there - most companies use Veritas BackupExec so you may have to find an evaluation version of it. There's always the 'tar' utilities under Linux...
 
Originally posted by: Damien
You need to know what software the data was written using and then use that exact same softare. If you don't know, try to guess where it came from and guess from there - most companies use Veritas BackupExec so you may have to find an evaluation version of it. There's always the 'tar' utilities under Linux...
Click to expand...

Most backup products will have a raw read utility, used for this particular purpose. If your Master Backup DB goes Tango-Uniform, you can use a raw read program to parse the tapes for data. It's basically the last option to go through (hopefully you know which tape has the data you are looking for) before you tell the client their data cannot be recovered.

Though you will need the backup program that the data was written with. The write format is standardized, but the compression most likely will be unique between vendors.

Edit: lol damn damien suckered me into an old thread. 😉
 
Originally posted by: TGS


Edit: lol damn damien suckered me into an old thread. 😉
Click to expand...

hehe me too. I still use a DLT 7000 to backup my data. I'm up to about 45 35/70gb tapes now. I need a new backup but $$$$ is a factor. Stuff aint cheap.
 
Depending on if you have certain backup windows to meet, and doubting if you are really getting 2:1 compression on backups, ever think about an inexpensive ATA solution? Even with the newer 500GB drives at $350-450, you could pop 7 in a server coupled with a reputable controller card. I can't recall off the top of my head, but I don't think the IO on DLT tapes is very comparable. That is if you have server hardware that you can configure like this.

We made a move from older DLT tape units, to LTO tapes. There was a nice increase, though the biggest boost was moving from two 2-Drive units to two 5-Drive units. Though it wasn't until we started to do mailbox level backups to disk could we meet our windows. The backend for the mailbox level was on a SAN though.
 
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