C Wilson

Sincere thanks for the very detailed reply Scillonian, I hope the Islands weather is to your liking, it's balmy and very nice for April here in the Midlands! I am absorbing all you said, but I am curious to know why Retrospect installs the WAIK software? I also remain unsure if Retrospect is capable of making a bootable drive image within itself, and if written to a hard disk if the Retrospect emergency repair disk will restore from it single handedly? Or do I need totally separate imaging software to create a bootable image, something like Macrium Reflect? then store the image as part of a backup using Retrospect? Thanks again.

I have progressed a little, but as my questions are now off at a tangent I have started a new thread, many thanks for the tips!

Thank you very much for the reply, I made another backup, just of the C: drive this time, with the option set (and I don't recall the exact words) to write the windows system files to the backup. The previous one also contained the D: drive, which I suspect was the "funny" file name. I assumed I could separate the sections i wanted to restore, but see now that's probably not he case. This copied across without errors from tape to a blank drive. However things still failed to go well. The first issue was the recovery disc made under Retrospect did not give the option to make the blank drive active. That option was greyed out. Nonetheless the image was transferred, but failed to boot. I then launched Windows with the original drives so i could then look at what Retrospect had written to the previously blank hard drive, the screen shot should be attached. This is obviously not what is required! Firstly, am I right in thinking Retrospect should be able to create a bootable image itself, and copy it to an LTO4 tape drive, and that I should then be able to boot from said drive? If it should be possible, can anyone suggest what's gone wrong here please? If this is not directly possible how do I backup the drive with Windows 7 OS on it to a tape drive, and be able to restore an operable system from it please? Secondly, is it right I also need to copy the catalogue file to another medium, as Retrospect will be unable to "see" this file direct from the tape back up? I am getting more and more confused now and maybe I am just not understanding Retrospects tape back up capabilities. Cheers. The screen shot of what Retrospect finally wrote from tape to a blank hard drive (the only one attached to the PC at the time) should be attached.

Further to the above I have succeeded in getting Retrospect to start writing a system drive copy from my tape drive to a blank C: drive, after speaking to support by phone. I copied the C:\Users\Chris Wilson\My Documents\Retrospect Catalog Files\ to a USB thumb drive and when the restore asked for the location of the catalog file I pointed it to the thumb drive and it started copying across to the empty C: drive from tape. But part way through the restore it stops and the log shows this error. i have hopefully attached a photo of the screen. Can someone tell me why this has occurred please? The back up tape was checked after it was written by Retrospect and showed no issues. Thanks.

Novice questions, my apologies if these are trivial! OS is Win 7 64 bit. PC has SSD C drive, and a software RAID 1 SATA III disk pairing as the D drive. Backup media is newly acquired SCSI connected LTO4 tape drive. Imagined sceanrios: C: dies or PC is stolen. I have to work out what strategy I need to rebuild my OS and data from a tape. Do I need to use the 64 bit disaster recovery disc option, or the 32 bit? My SCSI driver for the tape drive SCSI card is 64 bit. The RAID 1 Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver is unknown as to 32 bit or 64 bit, and I am unsure how to tell. It was loaded off the Gigabyte motherboard driver CD automatically. Can Retrospect Desktop create an image file of the C drive with the OS boot partition and files etecetera? Can it write it direct to tape? If not and I write an image to say the D drive (which has no boot stuff on it), and then copy the whole D drive with the C drive image upon it to tape, can the recovery disc load the tape drivers and retrieve and restore the OS from the tape? Tape seemed a good option at the time as I felt a hard drive stored unused for a few years may not reliably spin up, and a relatively inert tape cassette would be more likely to be usable after a long dormancy. I had not considered all the nuances of it, as a home user. I guess you IT gentlemen are more familiar with its use As an aside, and not strictly Retrospect relevant, a question about my Intel motherboard software controlled RAID 1 drives. If the MOTHERBOARD died, and a like for like replacement unavailable, would a different board still read this RAID 1 pairing? Would the Retrospect OS back up have any issues, maybe related to Microsoft not running Win 7 on different hardware, with backing up to a PC with a different motherboard? Would I need to buy the Dissimilar Hardware option? Thanks for reading.

I don't think I do, no, I'll check later, I believe I left whatever the defaults were. I suspect my issue is user error, thanks for pointing these options out. Retrospect is far more configurable than my previous back up programme (Macrium Reflect) and will take a bit of getting to grips with. I'll get there, eventually Have a good weekend. and thank you.

I'll read the section again, but should I expect the next backup after the first one to be much faster, only backing up changed, added or deleted files? My second backup took as long as the first, and only two or three files were changed unless a background system changed anything I didn't notice? Or is the fact the second backup took as long as the first a function of backing up to tape as opposed to a hard drive? Thanks for your speedy reply above

I am using the current Windows desktop version of Retrospect under Win 7 64 bit Pro. I am backing up mainly to an LTO4 tape drive. Backups are created and can be viewed as folder / file trees, and also restored successfully. But I am sure I am either misunderstanding the function, or not having Retrospect set up correctly, as every back up is a full one, never a progressive one. I made a successful backup of my D: drive, then changed a few files by deletion or addition. I then tried another "normal" backup, expecting only the deleted or added files to get altered, but it did another many gigabytes complete backup. I attach my logs in the hope someone may be able to use them to tell me what I am doing wrong, or maybe I am miusunderstanding the ability to do faster backups using a progressive method? Thanks. Best regards Chris in England UK. retrospect-log.zip