Software to import ntbackup tapes

[Mark]

Hi, I have an old travan tr4 (seagate) drive and some old tapes that I
dug up recently. For fun, I decided to reconnect the tape drive to my
XP SP2 box (after 6 years) and see if it worked. It did! Not only that
but it was able to catalog the old tapes in ntbackup. I tried a restore
and that's where to problem started. It runs for a few files and then
the tape drive just stops. No errors - nothing. After a day, I cacel
the job and it just cancels fine. So, I've no idea where the problem is
but thought I'd try different software. What I need is backup software
that:
- runs on xp (most seem to run on server editions only)
- can import ntbackup tapes
- is a bit more robust than ntbackup!

I thought of the old Seagate software but it is not symantec and their
software (the desktop version) doesn't even know what a tape is!

It's not urgent or anything, but does anyone know of any software that
I can try to get data off these tapes. As I say, they cataloged fine in
ntbackup, just not restore.

TIA
Mark

 

[Mark]

Hi, I have an old travan tr4 (seagate) drive and some old tapes that I
dug up recently. For fun, I decided to reconnect the tape drive to my
XP SP2 box (after 6 years) and see if it worked. It did! Not only that
but it was able to catalog the old tapes in ntbackup. I tried a restore
and that's where to problem started. It runs for a few files and then
the tape drive just stops. No errors - nothing. After a day, I cacel
the job and it just cancels fine. So, I've no idea where the problem is
but thought I'd try different software. What I need is backup software
that:
- runs on xp (most seem to run on server editions only)
- can import ntbackup tapes
- is a bit more robust than ntbackup!

I thought of the old Seagate software but it is not symantec and their
software (the desktop version) doesn't even know what a tape is!

It's not urgent or anything, but does anyone know of any software that
I can try to get data off these tapes. As I say, they cataloged fine in
ntbackup, just not restore.

TIA
Mark

Problem solved. Symantec Backup Exec 11d for Servers can do the job
and it installs fine on XP Pro. With Backup Exec, the tape drive reads
fine - i.e. it doesn't just stop for no reason. No idea why
ntbackup.exe can't cope with the tape drive when Backup Exec has no
problems, but given MS's move towards Noddy Backup for Children (or
whatever the Vista "backup" is called - and I use the term loosely) in
Vista, I guess that they are stopping development and support of
ntbackup so I'll probably never find out why it didn't work. :-\