Tape Data Recovery

Server and Personal Computer Tape Backup systems using 4mm DAT, Travan, Exabyte 8mm, LTO and the various QIC formats are popular and necessary to safeguard your data.

However, when these tapes fail, the situation is normally catastrophic as these tapes were often the only remaining repository of the data. Popular backup software such as Legato’s Networker, Cheyenne ArcServe, Veritas BackupExec, Microsoft NTBackup, Dantz Retrospect plus the UNIX tar and cpio utilities (and many more) all use different internal formats. i365 programmers are expertly trained to understand and extract data any type of tape media, regardless of format.

Why Tape Backups lose data…

Fire, smoke, water and even dropping the tape cartridge may damaged the media, resulting in data loss. Internal mechanism failure and exposure to extreme temperatures, as well as logical read/write errors on a tape’s file may also result in data loss.

Why Tapes Fail…
– Tape drive failure has corrupted tape headers
– Tape media stretched or snapped
– Fire & water damage Media surface contamination and damage
– Accidental reformatting or erasure of tape
– Accidental overwriting of headers
– Tape backup software corruption

Tape Media Formats and Manufacturers

  • DLT III, DLT IV, DLT-1, VS80, VS160 & Super DLT tapes up to 320Gb capacity
  • LTO 1, 2 Ultrium tapes up to 400Gb capacity
  • 4mm DAT format DDS, DDS-2, DDS-3 & DDS-4 tapes up to 40Gb capacity
  • Exabyte 8mm 112m and 160m tapes & Mammoth 1 (Exabyte 8900), Mammoth 2 up to 150Gb capacity
  • Seagate AIT & AIT-2, AIT-3 tapes up to 260Gb capacity
  • Travan TR-1, TR-3, TR-4 & TR-5 tapes up to 20Gb capacity
  • Iomega Ditto 2Gb QIC tapes
  • QIC Mini-Cartridges DC2000-DC2120 with 40, 80Mb & 250Mb capacity

Tape Backup and File Formats

  • Microsoft Tape Format (MTF) applications such as NT Backup and Seagate/Veritas BackupExec for Windows NT/2000, Backup Exec for NetWare
  • System Independent Data Format (SIDF) applications such as Novell’s Sbackup and Palindrome’s Backup Director
  • Practically all legacy DOS and Windows backup formats, including Colorado/Cheyenne Backup for Windows, Arcada/Seagate Backup Exec for Windows 95 & 98
  • Cheyenne/Computer Associates ARCserve for NT & NetWare
  • Previos/Stac Replica Backup for NT, NetWare
  • Legato NetWorker (all platforms)
  • Dantz Retrospect for Macintosh unix tar, cpio, fbackup, fsdump & ufsdump archives
  • Compaq/DEC VMS Backup
  • Intelliguard/Legato Budtools for UNIX platforms
  • Sytron / Seagate / Veritas Sytos & Sytos Plus for DOS, NetWare & OS/2