I was wondering what the standard procedure for restoring has to say about catalogs.

The usual scenario for having to do a full restore from backups is that the server crashes entirely and we restore an image of the server to a new machine, but in that event the backups we'll be restoring with are newer than the image of the machine so Backup Exec will not have the current catalogs. According to the support pages I should be able to create new catalogs based off of the newer media, but time and time again this has not worked, even using all the workarounds. Usually errors include "unable to inventory media number 7 in the set" and just other errors that will not allow a new catalog to be created.

I've tried every solution and am now just making copies of the most recent catalogs in an unencrypted form along with the backup exec daily backups. Is this the best solution? Has anyone run into this problem or found a better process?

Any input on this would be much appreciated,
Bob