Backup Exec disaster recovery after flood

[Mike]

Can anyone advise me about disaster recovery of Backup Exec files?

A small charity whose PCs I look after recently had its office flooded by a
burst water main. The PC was destroyed, and the backup CDs (which were
unfortunately kept in the same office) were immersed.

I managed to retrieve most of the backup CDs while they were still wet,
swilled them with clean water and let them dry. They seem to be readable,
but are in the proprietary backup format.

We were using 3-year old version of Backup Exec desktop edition. I have a
full backup (disaster recovery set) from about 18 months ago, together with
some of the daily incremental discs from the intervening period.

We are left with a number of problems:

1) I am not sure whether the disaster recovery set was meant to be bootable,
but if so I haven't succeeded in booting from it. (I tried this on my Sony
Vaio. The original PC was a Dell.) I also can't remember if I made boot
floppies, but, if so, they're gone anyway. The first CD has a "Readme.txt"
file, which I can read, but this just says the disc must be used with
disaster recovery software.

2) The installation discs for Backup Exec were lost. Veritas now only seem
to offer Backup Exec for Windows Servers, which costs about 10 times as much
as the desktop edition we bought originally. I have seen some Orlogix
products "powered by Veritas". Would they be able to read our old Backup
Exec CDs?

3) Even if we could do the full disaster recovery, the old PC had Windows
98, but the replacement will have XP. We don't particularly want to restore
an exact disc image, just retrieve the data files. Would this be possible?

Obviously, we will be improving our backup procedures for the future, but I
would really appreciate any advice about salvaging our old data.

Mike Redmond

 

[CWatters]

There are some copies of Backup Exec desktop edition V4.2 on ebay for $19
with a "buy now" option. Check they are full, legal and come with manual and
any serial ID you need to install etc. These auctions are not mine.

Colin

 

[Gary L.]

We were using 3-year old version of Backup Exec desktop edition. I have a
full backup (disaster recovery set) from about 18 months ago, together with
some of the daily incremental discs from the intervening period.

We are left with a number of problems:

1) I am not sure whether the disaster recovery set was meant to be bootable,
but if so I haven't succeeded in booting from it. (I tried this on my Sony
Vaio. The original PC was a Dell.) I also can't remember if I made boot
floppies, but, if so, they're gone anyway. The first CD has a "Readme.txt"
file, which I can read, but this just says the disc must be used with
disaster recovery software.

2) The installation discs for Backup Exec were lost. Veritas now only seem
to offer Backup Exec for Windows Servers, which costs about 10 times as much
as the desktop edition we bought originally. I have seen some Orlogix
products "powered by Veritas". Would they be able to read our old Backup
Exec CDs?

3) Even if we could do the full disaster recovery, the old PC had Windows
98, but the replacement will have XP. We don't particularly want to restore
an exact disc image, just retrieve the data files. Would this be possible?

Obviously, we will be improving our backup procedures for the future, but I
would really appreciate any advice about salvaging our old data.

Backup Exec has a number of limitations that you have observed. The
proper restore procedure is to install the program on a working system
and use that to extract the data you want from the backup archive.
Once the program is installed, you can browse the archive with a GUI
interface and select the files to restore.

Since you don't have the program disks and the product is
discontinued, you are in a bit of a jam. The successor to Backup Exec
is a program called "BackUpMyPC" from Stomp software:

http://www.stompinc.com/bump/bump-retail.phtml?stp

I think the odds are pretty good that it will read the archive from
the older version of the program. You can download a trial version or
contact Stomp to see if it will restore from your existing archives.

- -
Gary L.
Reply to the newsgroup only

 

[Will Dormann]

Backup Exec has a number of limitations that you have observed. The
proper restore procedure is to install the program on a working system
and use that to extract the data you want from the backup archive.
Once the program is installed, you can browse the archive with a GUI
interface and select the files to restore.

You sure about that? When I used it, you could create a pair of
"disaster recovery" floppies. Boot from those, and you could restore
your backup. (no need to have a working Windows or anything else)


=-WD

 

[J.Clarke]

Can anyone advise me about disaster recovery of Backup Exec files?

A small charity whose PCs I look after recently had its office flooded
by a burst water main. The PC was destroyed, and the backup CDs
(which were unfortunately kept in the same office) were immersed.

I managed to retrieve most of the backup CDs while they were still
wet, swilled them with clean water and let them dry. They seem to be
readable, but are in the proprietary backup format.

We were using 3-year old version of Backup Exec desktop edition. I
have a full backup (disaster recovery set) from about 18 months ago,
together with some of the daily incremental discs from the intervening
period.

Mike, before you spend money for anything, _try_ the backup program
included with XP. It is derived from Backup Exec--if you check
"help/about" you'll find that there is a Veritas copyright on it and
if you run it in "advanced mode" I suspect that it will look quite
familiar to you.

Whether it will read your particular backups I can't say with any
certainty--there were some features in the retail version that were not
in the bundled version IIRC that might prevent this. But given that it
doesn't cost you anything except a little bit of time it's certainly
worth trying.

We are left with a number of problems:

1) I am not sure whether the disaster recovery set was meant to be
bootable, but if so I haven't succeeded in booting from it. (I tried
this on my Sony Vaio. The original PC was a Dell.) I also can't
remember if I made boot floppies, but, if so, they're gone anyway.
The first CD has a "Readme.txt" file, which I can read, but this just
says the disc must be used with disaster recovery software.

2) The installation discs for Backup Exec were lost. Veritas now only
seem to offer Backup Exec for Windows Servers, which costs about 10
times as much as the desktop edition we bought originally.

I suspect that the reason for that and the reason they spun off the
desktop version is that with a version of Backup Exec bundled with
Windows there wasn't much market for the retail desktop version, which
doesn't really add all that much.

I have
seen some Orlogix products "powered by Veritas". Would they be able
to read our old Backup Exec CDs?

3) Even if we could do the full disaster recovery, the old PC had
Windows 98, but the replacement will have XP. We don't particularly
want to restore an exact disc image, just retrieve the data files.
Would this be possible?

You should have the options to restore to the original location, to an
alternate location, or to a single folder.

 

[Gary L.]

You sure about that? When I used it, you could create a pair of
"disaster recovery" floppies. Boot from those, and you could restore
your backup. (no need to have a working Windows or anything else)

I haven't used the program in several years, and when I did use it is
was just for data backup and not a full backup of the system. Also,
this was on an NT 4.0 system with NTFS. There may be some sort of boot
floppy restore method with some versions and some OSes. The
documentation for BackUpMyPC that I looked at before writing my post
stated that the restore method was to install the program in Windows
and run the restore option.

In any event, the OP doesn't have any boot floppies and doesn't care
about restoring the OS, so this is not an issue. The only issue is
finding some version of Backup Exec that will run on XP and will read
the backup CD and extract the data files.

- -
Gary L.
Reply to the newsgroup only

 

[Mike]

Thanks - I saw these too, but sadly they are 'Ship to US only'.

Mike

 

[Mike]

Thanks - I will try "BackUpMyPC".

Mike