Backup questions...

[Mike]

After a power surge trashed a server for a small office, I'm trying to get
what data they did have backed up on a 20g Travan tape drive. There are
three tapes & when trying to catalog them I get the error message "the
device reported an error on a request to space backward file marks. Error
reported: Bad Data" on one tape & the same message, except the error
reported is "Hardware Failure" on another tape. These tapes were backed up
using Windows own backup program, & I am trying to restore them using the
same program on the new computer.
Does this mean the backups haven't been working?
Is there anyway I can try to recover data?

 

[Roberto Ruiz]

Mike, it seems your backups have not been working fine. Looks like there are
read errors on the tape device. These errors might be due to hardware
problems on the device itself or to defective, maybe old, tape cartridges.
The only thing I can think of that you might try is using a cleaner
cartridge to clean the drive's heads or if you can manage to find a similar
or compatible tape device, try using it with your tapes. Anyway, if the
tapes were written when the device was already defective, or if are the
tapes which happen to be defective, I guess, regrettably, that there's
nothing to do.
Recomendation for next time: make sure your backups are working by
performing trial restores once in a while, and also recycle your tapes ...
they don't last forever.
Hope this helps,
Robert

Roberto Ruiz
Brainbench MVP for Win2000 Professional
http://www.brainbench.com