If you have a drive, you can use tar to read the tapes (little more work if they are multiplexed.)

I am in the process of duplicating about 100 SDLT tapes to LTO4’s.  – I have kept an SDLT tape drive attached to the master because I have long term tapes.  Once I get the dups done I can get rid of that drive.

Of course you always have to option to find a recovery company that does just that, gets data off of old media.

Well,

netbackup is using tar to write and read to the tape. If you not use multiplexing, and you know what is on what tape, then you can restore backups without netbackup.

I have come in front of many companies that have 15 years backups and they try to find a travan tape drive (or other) and the software to read the tapes.  

Hi Mark

Thanks for this. Yes, this is one method, but what about a backup solution - ie: now 20 years out of date, no media, no server to restore to and in a format unknown to todays backup systems.

What would you do then?  :-)

the client does not seem bothered, and is happy to destroy the Data. But if you are a banking client or someone that needs access to 20+ yr Data, then surely your planning has to account for this? Or maybe another solution?

Simon

From: Mark Phillips [mailto:Mark.Phillips AT unisa.edu DOT au]
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 7:37 AM
To: WEAVER, Simon (external); VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: Retaining Date for 20 years+

Simon,

A couple of years ago we retired DLT IV and LTO1 drives, going to a library with LTO4 drives only.

I used bpimmedia to work out which images were on the old media then bpduplicate to duplicate all long term retention  images that were on the old DLT IV and LTO1 media to LTO3 or LTO4 tapes.

Mark

Morning Guys
Not exactly a problem, but a question.
I started to do work for a small firm that has been removing legacy old kit and media as its 15+ years out of date (example: PC's acting as Servers, DDS tape drives, 3M Data Cartridges, (mini ones too!! amnd legacy Unix systems.

Now, what I was puzzled about is "how would they go about restoring this Data?", considering most of the Technology has just been removed / phased out.

It got me thinking that we have 5 - 10+ year retention of Tapes for NetBackup on LTO1 tapes but no means of loading it, you do not have high hopes of restoring it. Unless you obtain an LTO1 drive. But say 30 years down the line..... then what! Chances are, NetBackup may not read it, or worse.... No NetBackup environment at all ! (Similar to the client who was using their own standard 1990's backup software that is no longer produced and in a format that cannot be read!)

So really, curious how people would "protect" those essential years of Data?

Regards

Simon

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