Tape Backup in few simple steps
Uranium Backup manages the cartridges in the easiest way possible: you will never need
to format them and all backup operations will be made automatically. Moreover,
you can restore your
backup from any computer, because the program stores on the tape all backup
information.
Uranium is compatible with any Tape drive (SCSI,
USB, SAS, etc...) and with the most used types of cartridges: DAT, DDS, DLT, AIT,
SDLT, LTO, etc...
Requirement: on Windows Vista, Windows 2008
and Windows 7, in order to access the tape drive, you need to run Uranium
as Administrator.
Now let's see below the simple steps to configure a tape backup:
1 - Create new Backup Set:
In order to create new Backup Set, if there aren't other Backup Sets previously created,
you have to click on the link shown in the image, then specify a name and click the
button "Apply". If there are already other Backup Sets, you can open the "File" menu and click the item "Create New Backup Set".
2 - Add folders and/or files to backup:
In order to add folders and files you want to backup, proceed like in the above
image: in the section "Items and Destinations" click on the link "Click here to
add...", then select the desired items and click the "OK" button.
The items will appear like in the image below:
3 - Add tape backup destination:
In the list of common destinations you must click on the link shown in the image
and select the item "Add destination to Tape .
Once you have added the destination, it will appear like in the image below:
Backup Set Options
In this panel we can find several important options, like the backup type (the
Full
backup is always recommended), the tape drive to use (the drives can be selected
from a drop-down list depending on their symbolic name), the block size, that affect
backup speed and needed space on cartridge (the default value is good in most cases),
the possibility of compression and encryption, etc...
Leaving all the options to their default values, you can obtain a good result
in most cases, however it is possibile to change some parameters in order to
increase performances and data compression.
If you want to use the software compression it is recommended to leave all the
options to their default values (Advanced compression, Method 1, Normal
compression), in order to obtain both good
preformances and good space saving on tape.
Using instead the hardware compression, with some tape drive models you can
obtain a considerable performance increasing. Commonly the hardware compression
is enabled by default on most tape drives.
With some types of tape drive, like
for example LTO Ultrium, you can obtain higher speed using an higher block size
value, like 64K.
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Once the backup is completed, we can already take a look to Restore functions, to
see how to restore files from tape:
5 - Restore:
In order to open the restore window you must simply click on the button shown
in the image below:
Once you have opened the restore window, the program reads from the tape some useful
information about backup and shows you the list of files on
the tape:
After you selected the drives/files/folders you want to restore, click on the
button "Next". In the destination options you can set the folder where you want
the files to be restored (warning: if you don't specify a folder, the files will
be restored in their original prosition, overwriting existing ones):
Once you specified the folder where you want to restore files, click on the
button "Next". In the next panel you can set some important options, like the
overwriting of existing files, or the possibility to decrypt the files (if the
backup is encrypted) specifying the encryption password.
Click again on the button "Next" to go to the last screen, where you will see
a summary fo the options you set and the button to run the restore process:
During the restore process the program will show a window similar to the backup
activity window,
with all the information about the operation in progress. When the restore
process will be completed,
you will find restored files in the folder you specified.
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For any question or technical information about this tutorial you can post a message
in the
support
forum.
This tutorial talks about:
- How to do a tape backup with Uranium
- Windows Server 2008 tape backup
- DAT, LTO 2, LTO 3, LTO 4, AIT, SCSI, ASPI, SAS, USB, Firewire tape drives.
- Backup program compatible with HP StorageWorks DAT 72 SCSI and USB tape drive, Sony AIT tape drives, IBM tape drive, HP SureStore DLT Drives, HP StorageWorks Ultrium 3 LTO tape drives, DDS-4 tape drives - Tandberg LTO-2, Quantum LTO 4 e LTO 5, LTO-3 tape backup drives, etc...
- Dell tape backup
- IBM server tape backup
- Server 2008 R2 tape backup and tape backup on Windows 7