I have been tasked with getting data from some old LTO-2 tapes made with NBU 5.1. My goal is not to restore it to a new NBU environment but to simply dump all contents from the tapes to disk. For this I have set up a machine with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (64-bit), 8 Gb RAM, 4 TB external HD and HP-Ultrium 448 tape drive with U160 SCSI HAB. All hardware and software diagnostics pass before a NBU install. I have admin rights. The machine is unconnected to any other device.
I obtained a copy of NBU 7.5 (since I cannot get 5.1), carefully read the startup and install guides and thought that I had successfully installed it. However, my initial effort was unsuccessful at allowing me to browse the tape contents, much less offload the files. The experience gave me a lot of respect for the expertise exhibited in these forums.
I subsequently uninstalled NBU 7.5 and plan to reinstall it.
My initial questions are these:
1. Is there anything like a how-to guide for the steps to this basic restore operation?
2. Do any unusual things need to be done during the install?
3. Do I need to install a client on the server? Or is the Master Server / Media Server combination enough?
4. Almost nothing is known of the tapes, except that there is data on them. I do not know the MediaIDs, etc. Is there anything I can do to discover catalog names, client names, etc.? (I have been reading these forums and have tried a few things, such as bplistimage, but this did not return any values at all while NBU was installed on the machine.)
5. What advice for completeing the task would you give me? How would you approach this problem?
Any and all help would be deeply appreciated.
Best Regards