Re: Adaptec 1542C with NT4

On 21 Mai, 08:31, Mike Tomlinson <m...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <40046ef0-92aa-4ac8-891e-e0733f503...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
s.com>, harald.henkel....@xxxxxx writes

I restored 11 tapes, but for 3 tapes NT Backup tells me, the (first)
set cannot be catalogued or restored, because it is compressed.

What's the precise error message it gives?

Ok, some new information.
Today I restored NTBackup from WinNT 3.1 and WinNT 3.5 installations.
While WinNT 3.5 shows the same message as the WinNT4 version (I'm
german and thus use german NT, so I can only give MY translations in
english):

Dieser Satz ist komprimiert und kann weder angezeigt noch
wiederhergestellt werden.
This set is compressed and cannot be displayed or restored.

The NTBackup of NT 3.1 says (this was the SDK version which apparently
was in english):

Images backups connot be viewed or restored.

While this could well be a translation error in the German NT version,
in the line descibing the backup set NT3.5 and 4 say:

E: Satz 1 Band 1 norm 04.10.97 14:33:19 E:\Privat...

While the 3.1 version says:

E: Set 1 Tape 1 image 04.10.97 14:33:19 E:\Privat...

So what to think about this?
I never heard of NTBackup doing Image Backups, although the is a /SNAP
command line option, but what that does, I don't really know.
Maybe I should go on asking this in some Windows NT forum?
Because its more a WinNT problem than a SCSI problem!?


My assumption was, that those tapes are from Central Point PC Tools
Backup (i.e. CPBackup) (Version ?) made backups.

Ooh, I remember that.  It was _very_ useful for spanning floppies.

It recognized the still installed ASPI driver and the two tape drives.
But it tells me the 3 tapes are not created by CPBackup.

ok.

Is the tape format different for different versions of CPBackup
(6,7,8,9, Win1, Win2)?

Maybe.  I remember having trouble with different versions of CPBackup
and having to keep a copy of the program used to make floppy sets with
each set because of version incompatibilities.  Don't know whather that
applies to tapes though.

Is there any chance it was still made using NT Backup?

Well, as you say later, NT backup recognises the tapes and their labels
and descriptions, they were probably written with that.

Is it possible that the tape drive has been changed or had hardware
compression disabled?  (I can't remember if QIC drives supported
hardware compression.)  i.e. could this be a _hardware_ compression
problem?

There is also a little chance, that those tapes were written by some
simple Linux tools (probably not a backup program but something like
tar).

There's plenty of free Windows tar utilities.  A "tar -tv //./tape0"
will soon tell you.  There's a choice of graphical ones and command line
ones.  

I installed one called Tar98 years ago, just found it and it still seems
to work (on XP), but I don't have a tape drive installed any more.  (It
looks for a Windows device //./tape0, so if you have that, it should
work.)  It comes with utilities called Tapedump, Tapefeatures, and
Tapeutility which might be useful.

Is it likely that NT Backup could show such descriptions, if the
backup set was made with some different software (CPBackup, tar)?

Very unlikely in my opinion.  NTBackup usually says something along the
lines of "unrecognized, unformatted or blank tape" when it encounters a
tape format it doesn't recognise.

Can you boot a Linux live CD and do a "file /dev/st0"?  That may give
you some clues.

Oh, and do write-protect the tape :o)

Good luck.

--
(\__/)  
(='.'=)  Bunny says Windows 7 is Vi$ta reloaded.
(")_(")  http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png

.

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