> In a full backup on February, our 80 servers were backed up onto about 
> 60 tapes.
> In may of this year,  I stupidly overwrote the last tape of the
> february full backup.   As a result, the saveset of one of our clients 
> (and, no
> doubt, some of the files) disappeared.

Does the saveset exist on other volumes?  Is it only the final volume of
the saveset that is missing?

> 1. Is it possible to reconstruct what there is of the saveset?
> 2. Do I simply use scanner to find the first tape in the full backup
>        that has an instance of this clients saveset?
>     a. Do I then use "scanner -i" to reconstruct what there is
>        of the saveset even if it's incomplete?

I haven't tried that.  I'm not certain what will remain in the database
if the scan is not completed.  I'm pretty sure you'll have media
information, but the indexes may not let you browse if it's incomplete.

First I might try find the location on the other volumes.  Then assuming
the filesystem is compatible and I have enough disk space, do the
scanner|usasm idea to simply restore what is present on the tape.  That
could then be either transferred or backed up directly.

>     b. If yes, what is the fastest way to do it?

You need to know where the data is on the tapes.  You can scan for it
(especially if you know exactly which tapes it is on).  If you just
recently overwrote the volume, I might do a side recovery of an older
media database.  

Especially if I have a test machine with one tape drive, I could run an
mmrecov from an older bootstrap (one that predates the deletion).  Since
it's a test machine, I don't affect production.  But at the end of it,
I've got a media database that I can directly query for the location of
the saveset.

In fact, if the disk space is there, I could immediately do a save set
recovery on this machine.  When the recovery gets to the point that I
have to mount the missing tape, I stop the recovery and know that I've
got everything that I can get back.

If I didn't want to do a saveset recovery on the test machine, I could
at least use the recovered media information to direct the scanning of
the remaining tapes on the production server so that it goes faster.  Or
I could use that to directly recover (via scanner|uasm) the data that is
there.

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham AT taos DOT com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
         < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and 
type "signoff networker" in the
body of the email. Please write to networker-request AT listserv.temple DOT edu 
if you have any problems
wit this list. You can access the archives at 
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/networker.html or
via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER