Content unrecognized

[jrweber]

We have a client who had an ASIP server (6.31) crash. It was also the machine that was running Retrospect (4.2). After replacing the SCSI drive that went bad and adding a couple more ATA drives for storage I reinstalled ASIP and then Retrospect. When I went to rebuild the catalog file from the latest backup (Quantum DLT8000) Retrospect told me that the content was unrecognized. I tried 5 other tapes varying in age with the same result. He swears that before the crash the backup was working fine and he had restored from these same tapes multiple times.

 

 

 

Following the advice in some threads here I tried a different SCSI cable and a different terminator. I even moved the tape drive to a different machine, again trying it with multiple cables and terminators. Same result. Content unrecognized.

 

 

 

I now assumed that for some reason the tape drive had gone bad at exactly the same time of the hard drive crash. The drive was still in warranty to we arranged a swap of the drive. When the client recieved the new drive he hooked it up and lo and behold - Content unrecognized. All tapes are reporting this. We had him put a new tape in the drive and back up some data. He is able to recognize the new tape and restore from it.

 

 

 

So, here is the only conclution I could come to: The original tape drive had misaligned heads but was able to write to and read from tapes it had written. At the crash the heads went further out of alignment or at least out of alignment in a different way so they could no longer read the tapes they wrote. The new drive, being properly aligned, cannot read the old tapes either. This being the case, the client's only recourse is going to be a data recovery service.

 

 

 

Please, someone tell me I am wrong and there is something else I could try. The client swears he never upgraded to 4.3 but I cannot swear to that, but since 4.2 supports this drive it doesn't seem to me that it would matter if I was trying to read these tapes with 4.2 or 4.3.

 

 

 

Any help/sugestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

John

[AmyJ]

I understand you are experiencing a problem with content unrecognized error messages. If you think that the data _may_ have been written with Retrospect 4.3, you should try that version or higher. Data written with newer versions of Retrospect is typically not readable by older versions of the software.

 

 

 

This error message is basically a hardware error being reported by your tape drive. When you go to Configure>Devices and insert a tape, Retrospect waits of the tape drive to report the name of the tape.

 

 

 

When content unrecognized is reported, this means that your tape drive has read the header of the tape and is now reporting to you that the header does not contain readable data. Although your tape contains data, it is not readable Retrospect data.

 

 

 

If you are still seeing this error using Retrospect 4.3 or higher, it's probably safe to assume that the old tape drive was out of alignment. You've ruled out the comptuer, the cables, termination, and the tape drive itself.