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theboyk

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theboyk last won the day on October 13 2014

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  1. Out of nowhere, Retrospect Server 10, over the two weeks, is constantly "forgetting" about clients/sources that are listed in the application. Just noticed it again as I started getting reports from users that they're getting alerts they haven't been backed up in 10 days. Retrospect Server lists all of the client machines under Sources, but that's as far as it goes. • Reports to registered them (I have several reports for listing clients that haven't been backed up in 1 day, 3 days and 1 week. Even though these machines haven't been backed up in three days (in Sources, each client shows the last backup date of 3 days ago), the "haven't been backed up in 1 day" report doesn't list them. • When I run a manual backup on any of the clients, Retrospect just searches for the clients, never finds them, and the script ends with an "error -530 (backup client not found). - I've restarted the Retrospect Server engine - I've restarted the Retrospect Server itself - I've restarted the Retrospect Client software (on client machines) - I've restarted the Retrospect Client machines Nothing. - I can ping the client machines from the server - I can ping the server from the client machines - When I click "Add" (a source), all my client machines show up as found sources on the network - If I "Test Address" it returns the information as it should. Yet, all with all of the above, if I try and back up any of these machines, it fails. The only way I can get these clients backed up is to remove them from Retrospect, and add them back in again. I've now done this three times in two weeks. Which means, in two weeks, these machines have only been backed up a handful of times (instead of nightly). I've already wiped Retrospect 10 (the machine, completely) once this month already. Now, the only thing I can think of is that DHCP has something to do with this. All the clients that Retrospect can't find get their IP addresses via DHCP. I have two servers I also back up, and they have static IP addresses. No issues backing them up. But, anything that uses DHCP, those machines get "forgotten" by Retrospect. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears... k.
  2. We're using LTO4 tapes. And because Retrospect chokes easily, we never go beyond two members per media set (with two, overlapping/rotating media sets being used at any one time)—we rarely use the second member in a set—it's only used for a single night, once a backup tape fills mid-backup. It'll then grab a blank LTO4 tape from the second tape drive and finish that nights backup. At that point, the media set is retired and a new media set is started (and a bunch of other stuff is done to ensure all the files that are already on that media set don't get included in the next night's new media set...but I don't need to get into those details). We have various protocols in place for proper file management, archiving, etc., and when a job is completed, it's archived to onsite and offsite media for long term storage. But as I'm sure you're well aware, you can have as many protocols and standards and systems in place that you want, but in the end, people don't always follow those protocols. And that's when I get the request, because a protocol wasn't followed, or someone messed up in the archiving process, or just because people are lazy and it's "faster" to just ask me to pull from the backups than do the legwork themselves, etc. For the most part, it's 99% of the time because someone moved the files to another machine, but didn't properly documents the movement in the file tracking system. And so, I just use Retrospect (via Restore > Search for files/folders) to search through the backups and see where the latest version of the job exists. And 99% of the time, that's all I need as I then know where the file is (and I can close Retrospect down). Ironically, just as I was posting my last reply, I got a request for this exact situation. "Can you pull job 11600 from the backups? We can't find the files—they're supposed to be on Jack's machine, but they're not." Jack hasn't worked here in over half a year. So, here's what I ended up doing (spoiler alert: the job was moved to another machine without properly being documented)... - I had a PDF of the final artwork for the job, so I knew the name of the InDesign file. All our jobs/files follow a naming convention of 123456_FileName_vX.indd (with vX changing each time a new version of the file is generated...so v1, v2, v3, v4, etc.—in the end, once the job is approved/completed, the vX becomes FA). So I could extract the name of the InDesign file that generated the PDF). - I used the Restore > Search for Files option to search for the InDesign file name. - Retrospect returned multiple backups of the file name (all the vXs and final FA) and from that, I could see what machine the FA existed on. I didn't need to use Retrospect any further since the job was sitting on a machine 5 stations away. Luckily, it's a rare occasion I need to actually pull the job from the tapes (there's enough redundancy in place to not actually need to go to tape), but when I do, I forget how long in the tooth our Retrospect system is (compared to CrashPlan, which is what I use for everything else except these machines). Anyway, you said..."If you know the name of one file with a unique name from that project, it would be easy to find. Then you could find which snapshot it was and restore the entire folder." How would you go about determining which snapshot the job existed on, post searching the file? What I do is look at the latest "modified" date (and computer name) in the search results and then go to the snapshot for that computer on that date. Is there a better way?
  3. Also, I tried the Restore of selected files and folders. The initial "select a point-in-time" backup window only shows a random collection of restore points. I have no idea how Retrospect decides what to include in this list (do you)? It's a mash of random restore points of various different machines, going back as far as 2012 (when we moved to Retrospect 9). Nowhere near a full list of restore points. It doesn't even show all the restore points for all machines over the last 24 hours? So, I then need to click the More Backups... button. Then I'm displayed with a (very) long list of restore points (for my person backup folder alone, I have over 1000 restore points, going back to when we moved to Retrospect 9 in 2012, so it's a looooooong list when you take into account the 30+ machines that get backed up nightly). Also, once I'm in this new window, there's no option to browse the restore points. The only option is to "Retrieve a backup". Clicking the Retrieve option seems to do two things... 1. It loads the selected Restore Point back into the previous, at which point I can browse it. 2. Back in the main Retrospect console window, under Activities, Retrospect is requesting that I load the media that contained the Restore Point (not sure what it's trying to restore, since I haven't actually requested any files be restored yet?). And even then, the above is completely inconsistent. For example, once I've completed a go at the above, and realized the job I'm looking for isn't part of that restore point, I then need to click the More Backups... button again, since I need to look at another restore point. At this point, Retrospect completely dies. Sometimes it doesn't die, but it only lists a handful of restore points. Only way to get it to work is to do a complete reboot. So, I'm at a loss? If I shouldn't do a "search for files/folders" to find the job I'm looking for, and I can't browse more than a single restore point (of 1000s) without Retrospect dying, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do? Is there no way to search my backups?
  4. That works if I need something recent, but what if you have no idea what snapshot the job you're looking for is on? For example, say I get a request to pull a job from the archived backup tapes from 3 years ago, and it's not known what machine had the final version of the job on it. it's possible it was on one of 25+ design/production machines, 3 years ago. How would I find it?
  5. OK, I'm trying to figure out the most efficient backup approach, with specific regard to file matching, for this situation... I'm backing up a machine with a designated backup folder on it, so any files within said folder get backed up on a nightly basis. A user on this computer is working on a job with the following details (stored within the designated backup folder)... JobCode12345_JobTitle (this is the main job folder name) - ArtworkFile_v1.indd - Image01.jpg - Image02.jpg - Image03.jpg That night, the backups run and all of the above is backed up. The next day, they're informed that the project name has changed, so they change the name of the main folder and the job now looks like this... JobCode6789_NewJobTitle (this is the revised main job folder name) - ArtworkFile_v1.indd (NO CHANGE) - Image01.jpg (NO CHANGE) - Image02.jpg (NO CHANGE) - Image03.jpg (NO CHANGE) The backup script has the following Matching settings... • Match source files against the Media Set = CHECKED • Don't add duplicate files to the Media Set = CHECKED • Match only files in the same location/path = UNCHECKED On the second night, the backup runs. Because of the above Matching settings on the script, none of the files get backed up again. But, since the parent folder has had a name change, that parent folder itself would/should (?) get backed up. So, I attempt to pull JobCode6789_NewJobTitle from the backups. I go to Restore > Search for files in selected Media Sets and search for a folder with that job name. Nothing comes up. Why does nothing come up? I assume because only the parent folder name changed, and the contents didn't, for whatever reason, the folder doesn't get backed up. So, I add a file to the folder (image04.jpg) and re-run the backup. Then, I search for JobCode6789_NewJobTitle again. I go to Restore > Search for files in selected Media Sets and search for a folder with that job name. This time, that folder appears, and within it, Retrospect just shows image04.jpg as the contents of the folder. Maybe I'm missing something, but how do I retrieve the complete contents of the folder JobCode6789_NewJobTitle? Thanks, Kristin.
  6. I'm backing up 20 client machines on a nightly basis (to rotating LTO media sets). I've been using a regular backup script that's set to run at 10:30pm each not (and stops running at 6am the following morning)—plenty of time to complete all the backups (never had a backup "cut off" because it ran beyond the 6am cutoff). But, I have had instances where a machine, for whatever reason, didn't "appear" on the network during the schedule backup time, and thus, it's not backed up again until the following night. Here's an example situation... • regular backup script starts at 10:30pm • script starts with client machine #1 and ends with client machine #20 • client machine #1 is backed up, then client machine #2 is backed up, but client machine #3 is offline when it's its turn in the queue, so script skips it and continues on to machine #4 (and so on) • client machine #3 appears online, within that night's 10:30pm–6am window, but since it wasn't online when it was its turn in the backup queue, it doesn't get backed up (until the following night, when the script is run again) I was thinking, if I just used the same schedule, but used a Proactive Backup script instead of a regular backup script, client machine #3 would be recognized when it comes back online and it would get backed up during that night's window. Does that make sense? Are there any negatives in using a Proactive Backup script over a regular backup script? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Kristin.
  7. Great, thanks. Are v9 catalogs writable from v10, or would it be ready only?
  8. Hey all. Need to access something from an old v9 catalog. Is it possible to open a v9 catalog in v10 and read it (or does this require a full catalog rebuild of the v9 tape)? Thanks, Kristin.
  9. Thanks Lennart—ran the copy and 2 hours later, 500GB+ of data successfully duplicated! k.
  10. Hello. I have a pair of LTO4 backup sets I use for long-term archiving—theyre identical sets in terms of the contents as one set is for onsite storage and one is for offsite storage. My onsite tape has become damaged, so I need to duplicate the offsite tape to a new onsite set. What's the best way to do this in Retrospect 9 so that I make an exact duplicate of the working set? I have two LOT4 drives connected to the Retrospect server. Is it as simple as creating a Copy Media Set script? Is there anything I need to do, in the script's Options, to ensure it's an exact duplicate? Thanks, Kristin.
  11. Yea—and the list of snapshots/backups available goes on and on and on (and on)...and that's not including clicking the "more backups..." button.
  12. Maybe I'm doing something wrong then? If I need to retrieve a job, in Retrospect 9 (Mac) I do the following: 1. Click Restore in the top-left corner of the Retrospect window. 2. Select Search for files in the selected media sets. 3. Search for the job's folder name and select the range of media sets that the job *could* be on (since these backups run nightly, to alternating tapes, and I have almost two decades worth of tapes, if the job is old I have to select a number of media sets to search since I have no way of knowing exactly which media set the job could be on—many, many of these tapes are "hand me downs" from more than a decade ago, before I took this job over). 4. Select where I want the files restored to. 5. Go through the search results to find the job I'm looking for and select it (sometimes as job can be found in multiple "sources" since the job could have gone from machine-to-machine during the course of it's life, so I need to find the "final" version of it). 6. Retrieve the job from tape to HD. Doing this, Retrospect does not recover fileA, fileB, fileC, (they don't even show up in the listing when I drill down into the folder the should be in)—the only things there are file1, file2 and file3 when restoring the second folder. Is there another way of searching for a job that would allow me to recover it, completely, without having to write duplicate files to tape? Regards, Kristin.
  13. You know what would be a great option (which is how CrashPlan handles duplicate files)—rather than duplicating the files, when a duplicate is detected, only a reference is made that the file is a duplicate (on the backend, not seen by the user—the user "sees" the file as though it's been backed up where it's supposed to be). But, when a request is made to pull the files from the backup/archive, all the files are retrieved. This would save space (as per the current Matching, when Match only files in the same location/path isn't selected), but would also allow complete jobs to be pulled from the backups when required. For example, in our studio, we run Retrospect nightly. Many, many of our assets are being shared between these 30 computers. To save space, the Matching is left with Match only files in the same location/path off). But, when we need to pull a job from the backups, it's a pain as we not only have to pull the actual job folder, we also have to search for missing assets (once it's discovered they're missing). Would be great to not have to do this (via the above suggestion). Just a thought... k.
  14. Thanks twickland—that did the trick and the missing 250GB of data was backed up (I mean archived) successfully this morning! Thanks again, Kristin.
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