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Identify backup progam used with tapes

Tooms

Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2020
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Denmark
Hi

I got an big box of DDS2 90m 2/4gb DAT tapes and some scsi tape drives, the issue is that it was used 20+ years ago and i can not remember what backup software there was used or if it is dos or windows.

So is there an way to dump blocks from the tape and from that identify what backup software used ?

or is there some software there can help identify what the backup program is ?


Thanks
Thomas
 
I've used 'dd' under a unixish os with scsi tape drives to dump tapes to files, then used 'strings' to identify sytos, backup exec (same as ntbackup?), and netbackup formats. I don't remember exactly what strings were in them, but it was pretty obvious, maybe a copyright string?
 
It's a tough one. As eswan has mentioned, you can use Linux and dd/hexdump to look at the tape.

If you want to run MSDOS and have an ASPI driver for your SCSI card, I can give you a dump program under DOS.

Identifying the program is tougher, but you usually get most results by examining the first couple of blocks. There were a lot of backup utilities. If you can post the first few blocks, I can help.
 
I've used 'dd' under a unixish os with scsi tape drives to dump tapes to files, then used 'strings' to identify sytos, backup exec (same as ntbackup?), and netbackup formats. I don't remember exactly what strings were in them, but it was pretty obvious, maybe a copyright string?

yes that was also my idea to dump some blocks and with hexedit see if there was any identifyer of backup application.

I have only very limit experience with dd but i will look into that for the dump process.

Thanks
 
It's a tough one. As eswan has mentioned, you can use Linux and dd/hexdump to look at the tape.

If you want to run MSDOS and have an ASPI driver for your SCSI card, I can give you a dump program under DOS.

Identifying the program is tougher, but you usually get most results by examining the first couple of blocks. There were a lot of backup utilities. If you can post the first few blocks, I can help.

yes i am using msdos and has aspi4dos installed.

so if you have/know a tool there can do that do this, that will be good to test with

Thanks
Thomas
 
I'll dig it out today and PM you with a link.

Hi

That has helped my on the way..

1.
found that 2 of 3 dat drives done really work, so only one of the drives seems to work fine.

2.
I have used many different backup applications like CP backup 8.0 and 9.0, Seagate NTbackup 5.0, TAR, and some unknown "NSURE"

3.
The application works fine with DAT drives but i also has an EXABYTE 8200 8mm drive and that just return an error.. that i think is that it maybe has another block size or because it is older scsi1 drive.

4.
many tapes dont read at all do to media error (can maybe be the drive is not to good)


5.
Unknown backup applications, do you know what that can be ??
Block 1:
00000: 21 4e 53 55 52 45 21 00 00 00 35 9f fa 5c 5c fa | !NSURE!...5..\\.|
00016: 9f 35 31 32 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | .5123...........|
00032: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00048: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00064: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00096: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 1f 00 | ................|
00112: 80 fb 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00128: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00144: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00176: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00192: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00208: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00224: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00240: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00256: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00272: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00288: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00304: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00320: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00336: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00352: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00368: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00384: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00400: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00416: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00432: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00448: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00464: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00480: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00496: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|




So with the help from this application i have then been able to restore 4 dat tape but i have more that i need to debug and resolve.


Thanks for the app.


Regards
Thomas
 
That has helped my on the way..

1.
found that 2 of 3 dat drives done really work, so only one of the drives seems to work fine.

Type error, it is "found that 2 of 3 dat drives dont really work, so only one of the drives seems to work fine."


3.
The application works fine with DAT drives but i also has an EXABYTE 8200 8mm drive and that just return an error.. that i think is that it maybe has another block size or because it is older scsi1 drive.

update: the app will fail often with an "SENSE" error, but by just rerun the tool it will sometimes read the block 1 and return the output.



For anyone there also need to recover tape, i have found another application called "Tape mate II" there is having an function to dump raw data blocks

1. Download "Tape mate II", it is at a number of locations but will not link to it directly

2. Run tapemate.exe

3. Config the settings for your tape drive and save the settings

4. exit tapemate back to dos

5. in the folder is an program called "tapedump.exe" and it dont seems to take any options, it just read the config files (from step 3) to finde the drive and start dumping the full content to screen and depending of you drive and size this can be alot of text so be ready to ctrl-c.
Another ways is to pipe it to file like, tapedump.exe >output.txt

The output is ascii and not binary, so it need converting


Hope this info help some one..




By the way, anyone know what this format is:

Block 1:
00000: 21 4e 53 55 52 45 21 00 00 00 35 9f fa 5c 5c fa | !NSURE!...5..\\.|
00016: 9f 35 31 32 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | .5123...........|
00032: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00048: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00064: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00096: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 1f 00 | ................|
00112: 80 fb 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00128: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|
00144: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | ................|


Thanks
Thomas
 
This is a great thread. Apologies to resurrect an older thread, but I'm facing the same issue. I have a lot of tapes that I'd like to dump and get rid of. 11 of them are DC6150 3M QIC-150 tapes. 10 were sent to me ages ago and I lazily put off doing this. I have been struggling to get the data ever since.

The person who sent me these backups sent me his drive - a Sankyo CP-150SE SCSI drive. It's very old. I am suspicious if it's the problem.

I have a machine setup with dual boot to Windows 98 (and defaults to command line / DOS mode with CD and ASPI8DOS.SYS) and Windows XP. It's not the greatest motherboard because, as old as it is, it's too new - Asus A8N-SLI. No drivers for Win98 and, sadly, when Win98 is running more than a few minutes the box hard freezes. It doesn't in DOS. I'm using an Adaptec AHA-2940 PCI board.

The person who sent me the backups ALSO sent me TapeMate 1.1 and 1.2 floppies and I've been able to install it. This is where it gets frustrating.

Under WinXP it just does not work. Under Win98 or DOS it's better, but often loses contact with the drive and I haven't been able to get it to dump much of anything. One of the tapes started spinning endlessly and I'm not sure if the tape got tired of all the constant whining from the drive on reboot after reboot.

One of the things I've noticed is while TapeMate has a driver for the Sankyo, the only adapter driver is "DOS ASPI Driver ASPI.DRV" or something, nothing specifically about the adaptec.

I saw someone had some utilities they PM'd another poster - I'd appreciate any utilities or software that could read these tapes. DOS or otherwise. It'd be super to read the tapes in WinXP but Cheyenne Arcserve 6 says "Non-Cheyenne Format" when it loads one of these tapes... meh!
 
You're not going to be able to run anything like this under Windows XP. As a general rule of thumb if it involves directly reading or writing to hardware then it won't work under Windows XP properly.

Your best bet is to run it in Windows 6.22 or boot Windows 98 or 95 into dos mode and not use the windows OS which is going to have drivers and things that are just going to get in the way of directly reading and writing to hardware. The data is going to be wonky and you're going to need to do multiple reads to get some blocks. For the tape drive to do multiple reads of a block it's going to have to cycle the tape multiple times for that section.
 
I use Linux with both mt-st and scsitape installed. Hasn't failed me yet. I really don't understand why folks fool with Windows when doing tape stuff like this. Early last year, I handled 8mm, Magnus, DDS and LTO-2 on the same Linux machine. The Adaptec 2940 in its various forms is a widely used SCSI adapter.
Offhand, these being DC6150 QIC tapes, I'd suspect issues with the cartridge tension bands. Time is not kind to those.
I like the Tandberg SLR drives for this kind of work.
 
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I have to agree with Chuck. When I was trying to recover some DDS2 tapes I made in the late 90s using Backup Exec I used a Linux box. I was able to capture the data with DD. But trying to use any program that could read Backup Exec files didn't get me too far. I'd get errors so a block number or something may have gotten corrupted. I could see what files were on there, but not get them copied off. I even tried it on Windows as there is a program for that but it just complained about some missing software which I could not find to make the program work. Nothing really important on these. I was hoping some of my BBS files were on one or more.
 
I usually end up writing my own recovery code--often, I'll only get one of a set of tapes or there will be a tape missing from the set, unrecoverable errors, etc. So, it's scratch my head, pull out some hair, and write some code.
 
The programs I used were for an earlier version of Backup Exec. I think there were some changes somewhere but I could not find any documentation on the version I had used. This may also be the reason for my errors. I do not know where else to look. I found some comments for others on this too. Nothing past a specific version of Backup Exec and its format.
 
Thank you for the feedback. All spot on. We are able to get the data off with Linux, but then the problem is the Trantor TapeMate II format. You definitely can see the filenames and such. Some of the tapes have degraded parts and my Sankyo drive probably did too - it despooled one of the tapes which I hope is able to recover some data from but it stretched and tore some of the tape.

But the data comes off... but now on a Linux box, how do you convert it to a real filesystem?
 
Do you know what backup software was used? This is paramount to recover as you'd hopefully then be able to find it's format. From that you could write some code
to recover or maybe find something already existing to use. Is that what the NSURE is? I see Novus has an NSURE backup. I know nothing about it.
 
Trantor Tape Mate II for DOS. I haven’t been able to find any details on it. I have it but getting it to work in todays era is a challenge
 
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