Restoring data on LTO3 on an LTO4 drive

Question

I am using Networker 7.3.1 (Windows 2003) using four LTO3 tape drives, two for NDMP and two for staging our data from our SAN to Tape. Recently we added two LTO4 drives to Networker so now we have two libraries under Devices. The LTO4 drives now handle our staged data and the old LTO3 drives were reconfigured for NDMP backups as well. So now we have 4 LTO3 drives doing NDMP backups.

Well when I tried to restore data from an old LTO3 tape (non NDMP), I had to do it on the LTO4 drives since our NDMP drives are dedicated to NDMP only. Since this tape was from last year, the index was expired and needed to be rebuilt. I ran the the following command (same as I used to when restoring on the LTO3 drives):
scanner -i -S 2292390102 \\.\Tape0

Normally the tape would be scanned and the index rebuilt so I could access the data via the Legato client. However, this time I am getting the following message:
scanner: LTO Ultrium tape 2453112609 for volume 030969L3 conflicts with existing media database entry for LTO Ultrium-3 tape 2453112609
then terminates the scan.

Not sure how to resolve this?

amediratta · Answer

The ID for old tape is same as the ID of one of the new tapes. I would suggest going to EMC Support for this OR try a workaround: Create new NW server, create client with the same client ID and scan the tape there and recover your data OR delete the new volume from Volumes, restart networker services, scan the old tape and recover data...once done repeat the other way round...delete the old volume, srtar networker services and rescan the enw tape.(Sounds too complicated...would be best to go to Support then testing workarounds on production data).

Biku1 · Answer

I think you can try by creating the Dummy client profile .Try to scan the tape by specifying the dummy client name ..Hope it will work

ble1 · Answer

The problem you have is that new scanner wished to create entry which is a beat different from previous one. Namely, NW does not know if your media is LTO3 or LTO4, it only knows about drives and it assumes volumes used are the same type. Your existing mdb entry for volume has type set to LTO3 which the one you scan now is LTO4 and this is seen as difference (you can see that with mminfo). You may do following:
- run ssid restore of data you need
- delete volume from mdb and scan it again (unless you know what you are doing I would not recommended it as you may get in troubles later in case you need some other data which span).

NetWorker

Restoring data on LTO3 on an LTO4 drive

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