Arcserve 6.6 E3801 – Invalid session header signature when trying to restore tape with multiple sessions

Question : Arcserve 6.6 E3801 – Invalid session header signature when trying to restore tape with multiple sessions

After backing up our data daily for years fat dumb and happy, we recently had a need to actually restore a few files. When looking at the log file the backup (with verify) runs with just a few explainable file access errors, reports “incomplete” but otherwise looks ok. When trying to restore from the restore wizard, if the file I want to restore lives on the first session, it will restore the file just fine. If the file is on any other session the E3801 error pops up reporting a session ID of 00000000 or dddddddd or similar bad data. Tried another drive, tapes are new, even tried the full erase and reformat. Same results.
Any Ideas?


Solution: Arcserve 6.6 E3801 – Invalid session header signature when trying to restore tape with multiple sessions

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this, busy times. I tried to do a firmware upgrade on the tape drive, it’s an HP C5686A through the tape drive management tool that HP provides and I hit some roadblocks that would not allow me to proceed with the process. I’ve decided to look at some other back-up solutions that would allow me to do D2D. Well be backing up data from a mix of servers. some NT4, Windows Server 2003,  an Exchange server 2007, and assorted shares on XP workstations. If anyone has any recommendations on a reasonably priced package that I could use I would welcome your input. Backing up about 50 GB. I have been playing around with Genie-soft backup pro and it seems to work pretty well. Need to go with their server edition to be able to get the exchange server files it looks like.