The customer shipped over 5,100 pieces of media (a variety of DLT, LTO, Exabyte, DDS, CDs, and other formats) to Ontrack. To clean and inspect so many tapes on time, not enough staff were on hand and no tools were available to automate the task. The team was unsure what to do next until an engineer, Thomas Hanselmann, went home to play with his son. While building a Lego bulldozer with his son, he realized that the Lego package contained a motor that propels the bulldozer. Hanselmann had a light bulb moment and realized that the kit could be converted into an automatic backup tape cleaner. The makeshift Lego backup tape cleaner worked. The Lego machine is still in use. This has been renamed a Lego moment: “Having a complex problem and finding a simple yet elegant solution”.
Ontrack recovered the data and copied it to several 2TB drives that were scanned with their IBM TSM backup software to determine if there were any patents or other valuable historical information in the data.
Ultimately, the extremely contaminated tapes were recovered with a 95% success rate, and 90% of all tape media were recovered within the stipulated 6 months.
More about Backup tape recovery: https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/tape-services