Recovering from Tapedrives ! Please help we are stuck

We installed Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server(Build No.8039) installed successfully on Windows 2003 Server, created the acronis secure zone & activated the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager successfully. It took a backup of average 20GB data of C drive directly to the tape drive(HP DDS4-datacartridge) the backup completed successfully without any error message and later when we crashed the system & tried to recover from the F11 option pointing to the tape drive tree we are getting this error message:

"Acronis True Image Enterprise Server backup archive is corrupted,If the backup archive is an image try to mount the image & restore data intact"

We verified the same procedure with MS-Windows NTBACKUP which completed the task successfully. Please advise on the procedures if any, in backing up data and recovering the data from the tapebackup. I have attached the snapshot of the error message also along with this email.

PS: We have backed up the data to a new datacartridge and not a used one.

Finally, should we not recommend to the customer's to take a tapebackup of the image of an HDD or please advise, as it is reported from one of Acronis forums to recover 80GB data the time taken by Acronis Enterprise 9.1 is 9 Hours. Please advise a solution to the issue.


Ganesh MS

 

Tapes never are a safe backup!
Use Disks or a NAS to save your images!

 

Personal Experience:

Backing-up to tape is fast enough. But restoring from a tape using a liveCD on linux (which has very very low optimized drivers for tape drives) was a pain.

It took 15min to backup to tape whilst in windows. And 3.5 hrs to restore from the same tape drive into another identical machine.

 

Our customer wanted the backup image to be placed on a tapedrive. We suggested he take a backup image on a external hard disk like USB drive or on another exterbal device like NAS, SAN or DAS, but he insists that the backup should be on a tapedrive instead as MICROSOFT NTBACKUP does the same in a jiffy. I think since the tapedrive is sequential device in nature the image retreival might be next to impossible.

Wonder if we should suggest new customers that backing upto a tapedirve is an impossible feature in ACRONIS


Acronis support team should reply to this!

 

Hello ganesh2280,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Remote Server Backup Software.

Could you please try validating the backup both from Windows and using Acronis Bootable Rescue Media and tell us the results?

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov

 

Hello Marat Setdikov,

Nice to see the response from Acronis Support.

Marat Setdikov, yes, we were able to validate the archive from Windows but when we tried to validate from the bootable rescue media we were not successful we received the same error message as in the error message attached.


Now we are struggling to recover the data from the datacartridge. Should we recommend not have backup archives on the Tapedrive? Please clarify.


Thanks & Regards,

Ganesh MS

 

This is a common issue. The standard rescue disk is Linux based and if the backup was performed in Windows in some circumstances using the Windows version to backup and the Linux version to restore (and vice versa) can cause the image to read as corrupt.

You can try building a BartPE,WinPE or VistaPE (Winbuilder) rescue disk to solve your issues. These disks use the Windows version of TI (and drivers) so if you are able to verify within Windows if should work for you.

Keep us posted.

Corey

 

Dear Acronis Support Team,

The answer to my issue of recovering from Tapedrives is still not so convincing. This negates your claim to backup to tapedrives. Please answer

 

Hello ganesh2280,

Could you please update to the just released build (8072) of Acronis True Image Echo and see if the problem persists? To get access to updates you should first register your software. Don't forget to recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media after updating.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov