oslomike

This issue has been fixed, thanks!

suddenly, one day retrospect is having a problem starting the console. I can't get past the "syncing 1 of 1" start up screen. Best way to fix? I have a very large catalog, 7.7GB, but even though I expect it to take a long time, it actually never recovers. I can repair the catalog with the last tape in the set, but I need to get access to the console. How? All tips are appreciated. Thanks!

True that, Lennart!! 🙂

Nigel and David, Thanks! You've super helpful. Unfortunately though, I think I was asking too much of Retrospect, and maybe even of myself. I've been trying keep things under control work-wise, balancing my real job and at the same time be the IT manager, which I'm not. I'll have to dial it back a little until I get more time. I've found a solution that will work for for the daily disk backup using a different product, while I'll continue to do all my archives with Retrospect and the LTO tapes. I've learned a lot from you both. Thanks again. mike

Realistically, I only really need a backup of projects on the SAN that have been worked on up to a year back in time. In the case of a SAN failure, it's not as important to restore the entire SAN to the state it was in before it failed; anything missing is on LTO tapes. Two years is a good buffer, and if a script could keep me current with projects that are up to two years old, I would be very happy with that. If I wanted to do that, is there a script that I can set up that will do exactly that?

David, this is very interesting. In my case, for my Disk Media Backup, can I select an entire disk as the directory and set the script to include (Backup) everything Created within the past 24 months, and exclude (remove) everything created before 24 months ago? I didn't quite find out how to do the last part. I do have a license for v17 so these "seekrit" options should be available. I'll look into it some more.

Hi Nigel, Lot's of info here. Thank you for all the good pointers and detail. I know it takes time to write these posts, so yes, thanks for being so generous. You mentioned that I should just backup everything on the SAN. I was hoping/thinking that making a disk media set I would do that and make it so I could do quick restores any project in any point in time that was worked on within that past two years without having to get out the LTO tapes. The life saver scenario for me is for the occasion where I accidentally saved over a version of a song which has been heavily modified, only to find out the artist preferred the version I was working on two days ago, which I destroyed. My backups/archives to LTO tapes happen daily in the middle of the night, I was planning on having the Disk Media Set backup scripts also run nightly. And I was hoping I could set it and mostly forget it. In my mind, grooming sounded like a good idea. Set it up and always have 24 months of backups online and ready to be restored. As for grooming scripts, option 2, using selectors was what I was thinking, but maybe it's not possible. I don't know if this is possible, but it's the goal. I'll keep reading and trying to learn how it all works and what is actually possible. Thanks again.

Thanks Nigel. I appreciate the lesson on the different between backup and archive. 🙂 I admit I've never used the term "archive", I've always used "backup." For me they've been one in the same because I've always done my backups to the tapes and I archive them in different safes in different locations. I have a rotating set of three, with one complete set always in a safe close to the backup machine for when I need to restore something, which is fairly often. BUT NOW, after al the help and insight I've received here, I'm going to make a proper backup to local disks. AND I think I need a little help with the script. Here's what I'd like to do: I would like to make a Disk Media backup script that will backup any file or folder on a RAID disk that has been created or modified within then last 24 months. Anything that is older than 24 months that hasn't been touched, gets groomed off the Disk Media Backup set. Is this possible? I have looked at the Rules possibilities in RS, but I haven't figured out which rule(s) are the ones that are best. It seems a couple will do the job, but I suspect there are nuances in how they behave that will affect the outcome. Any tips? Thanks.

Nigel, SAN is for live data for the most part. We tend to keep projects that are up to 18 months old because clients in the music industry have a tendency to need the material to make something new from it; long story. So, I this is what I'm thinking would be good for me. 1. Archive the entire SAN to LTO; happens nightly and is rotated with three media sets throughout the week. (Archive is taken care of) 2. With a NAS or internal drives in the MacPro, 12 T of disk storage to keep 18 months of backup, with the use of a filter in RS, and writing the data to Disk sets. (backup taken care of) 3. Groom disk sets so that any project or file that's older than 18 months gets groomed off the disk media sets. Am I understanding this correctly? The great thing for me about RS, is that it does it's thing and I ONLY have to make sure the correct LTO tape is in the drive. It's pretty much set it and forget it. I'm hopefully what I described above can also be set and forget for the most part.

Hi Nigel! Once again, thanks! I'll try and have a look at the 13.5 version over the weekend. I did try to rebuild a v6.1 File set using RS 17 but it came out the same as 10.5. I'm hoping that 13.5 will be magic. OR, can you think of some simple setting somewhere that might affect the rebuilds that I'm doing? Maybe even the way my File Sets were created in v6.1?

Hi Nigel, Thanks for doing that test. I tried your suggestion where I attempt a Restore and then select More Backups, but the results are always empty. The RS console shows me the rebuilt Media set has over 300 backups in it, but the program will now show me any of them. Strange. Maybe it's actually better in later versions of the program? I couldn't find a MacOS v13 of the app that you mentioned. Are you using a PC? Could that be the difference? I would rarely need to get to the older snapshots, but once in a while, it can be a real lifesaver.

Hi Nigel, I see that I didn't really understand the difference between backup and archive. It seems a lot clearer now. In my case, an archive has been the priority. I have three media sets that are rotated three times a week. What I'm discovering is that we could probably benefit from having a RS Disk Media set that backups everything on the SAN RAID that's less than 18/24 months old. I guess this is something RS can do, yes? Is that what you mean by scrubbing? Is that also what Retrospect calls grooming? I'll look into it. As far as if I REALLY need to keep old archives and every snapshot. I would need it only very seldom, but when I do need it it's a life saver. I will probably end up making v6.1 File Sets of all my old v4-v6 Media sets just so I can get the data off the old tapes that are getting increasingly problematic, and then back up all of those File Sets to the RS v17 on the LTO tapes. I don't really enjoy the IT hat I have to wear, but I'm getting better at it, especially thanks to people like yourself and others who have been very generous with what they know. I'm very grateful. Thanks

Our RAID is a SAN setup via iSCSI, I've never used a NAS.

Nigel, You're correct about my old backups, I wasn't very smart in the early days; I'm only a little smarter now. 🙂 I do have triplicate Media sets on all my LTO-5 Sets and the live shared storage we use daily is a spread across several RAID 5 volumes. I should probably have a better system for maintaining and grooming some sort of mirror backup that can automatically groom the hard disks after 18 months time. Would a NAS be good for this?

Hi Nigel, You got me thinking. Are you native 6.1 Files Sets showing up in the Retrospect app as a Folder, or a single file. My File Sets that I transferred from tapes show up as a Folder in Retrospect and that's probably because the File set consists of two files, a catalog file and then all the data in another file. On my 10.5 system, when I rebuild a 6.1 File Set, I'm only able to rebuild by selecting the Data file; the catalog file seems to be ignored. I just wondered if you experience the same?