Urgent! Software to read data from Travan 20 tapes?

[HCHTech]

I walk into a new customer's (optometrist) office today to diagnose no access to their scheduling software. 4 Optiplexes in a workgroup with 1 acting as the host for the software. The host PC has a hard drive that is dead (not even spinning). Also on this PC is an ancient Travan20 tape drive, their only backup system. I spent 30 minutes digging through their back room with the owner looking for backup software, to no avail.

Replaced the hard disk and reinstalled XP-Pro, the tape drive is recognized in device manager, and the drive whirs to life if I insert a tape, but I can't expand the drive in Windows Backup (maybe it doesn't support tapes, I never tried it before).

Checked Dell's site for software, nope. It's a Seagate STT20000a drive, but of course, Seagate sold their tape business to Quantum, so no support from Seagate either. checked Quantum's site, but couldn't find help there, either.

So, I'm looking for a cheap or free software that will let me read their tapes to see if I can pull the database from them. We'll be moving to a different backup solution the next time I set foot in the building, so I'm not interested in springing for BackupExec or similar.

I'm trying to pull this together this evening so they can see patients tomorrow, but I haven't promised anything....just trying to save the day.
Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[coffee]

Im not sure if this will work but if you boot up a live linux cd and run the MT command (Magnetic Tape) and see if it will even read the tapes.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-tape-backup-with-mt-and-tar-command-howto/

I hope their tapes are not old and worn out.


coffee

 

[HCHTech]

Uh oh. I see the drive under storage devices in parted magic, but issuing a rewind command to st0 gets a "device I/O error" and no light or tape movement...

I'm calling it a night. Gonna take a fresh look in the morning.

 

[bigdessert]

I may have an old copy of Seagate tapeware at the office, won't be able to check until Monday though.

 

[seedubya]

FYI - Windows Backup DOES support tape drives including the Travan20 - well it did, like a millennium ago...

You're probably better off sending off the dead hard drive for data recovery

 

[TazUk]

So, I'm looking for a cheap or free software that will let me read their tapes to see if I can pull the database from them.

You would need to use the same software as was used to create the backup to have any hope of restoring it back.

We'll be moving to a different backup solution the next time I set foot in the building, so I'm not interested in springing for BackupExec or similar.

If you install Backup Exec without a license key it normally runs as a 30 day trial, which should be enough for you to restore what you need to.

 

[HCHTech]

Thanks, everyone. I think we'll probably be sending the old drive for recovery (incoming --> 300DDR, known to my customers as $400DDR. :-D )

I had the same thought that if we don't load the original software, we wouldn't be able to access the data properly anyway. This is a case of not making their problem my problem. If they can find the software, great, otherwise we have to just move forward.

 

[HCHTech]

So..it turns out that the previous tech (a scholarly fellow and stand up guy, whoever he was), created an xcopy script on one of the workstations to back up the database each night. I stumbled across the backup when I was copying the configuration file from one of the working computers! In the end, they only lost one day's entries. A definite win.

 

[JustInspired]

So..it turns out that the previous tech (a scholarly fellow and stand up guy, whoever he was), created an xcopy script on one of the workstations to back up the database each night. I stumbled across the backup when I was copying the configuration file from one of the working computers! In the end, they only lost one day's entries. A definite win.

That was a bit of luck. I'm a fan of multiple backup systems.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I bet that old Travan drive is dead. You'd be surprised how many clients I would walk into after a drive failure to find out that the tape also was dead and hadn't worked in months, with the staff dutifully swapping tapes on a dead drive.

 

[seedubya]

Unmonitored backups, especially to tape are about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike...

 

[jay007]

As far as I can remember I think they came with Tapeware software. I might even have a copy of it in my old cd case. At least the xcopy got you sorted.