VMS Backup tapes on anything...

[Barry Shein]

While we're on the topic, I wonder if people have seen this note which
appeared in comp.os.vms?

Executive Summary: Full VMS backups may contain no useful data.



>I think the net might be interested in knowing about a bug which
>is in standalone backup for VMS 5.2 and above.
>
>DEC knows about this bug and there's an article on DSIN (so I'm
>told).  However, what gets me is that DEC did not send any
>notification about this problem to all of its  customers --
>especially since the nature of the problem  is so critical.
>Consider this the notification :-}
>
>
>The bug rears its ugly head when you try to restore files (using
>either standalone or online backup) from a  standalone backup
>save of a disk volume-set.   You'll see no errors during the
>initial save nor during the restore. You'll also not see any
>problems from VERIFY after the restore. In fact, DIRECTORY shows
>that all the files are just fine.
>
>However,  the information in the files is corrupt.   I took a
>sample of the files on the volume after a complete volume-set
>restore (we lost an HDA on a member which required the complete
>restore).  I found a little under 1% of the files sampled to be
>correct. These 'good' files had nothing in common either (i.e.,
>they were not restricted to a particular rvn of the volume-set).
>Most of the files were empty, some had garbage, and  some
>contained the contents of other files.
>
>
>In any case, do not rely on any standalone saves of disk
>volume-sets for V5.2 and above.   You therefore have two choices:
>
>        a)  use online BACKUP for backing up volume-sets under
>                VMS V5.2+; or,
>        b)  use a standalone backup kit prior to V5.2.  (If I
>                were you, I'd use a 4.x kit.)
>
>How unfortunate for us that we now have apparently lost all work
>done since VMS V5.2.  What was that?  You say you your last
>backup prior to V5.2 was in late August?....
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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