MikeHutch

OK, thanks. Will try that next time the dreaded 'no media' error crops up.

Out of curiousity, how did you do a 'media set member repoint'? I can't get that to work in Retro 10.5 with favourite folders, as sources, and a folder on a NAS drive as the backup destination - probably doing it wrong.

Are you trying to restore all files? Or just want to view/browse all files in the backup before manually selecting a few files/folders to restore? After selecting restore button, and do a search restore. Don't type anything in the search field. This will view all the files in the backup, if I'm not mistaken, and now you can go through and tick all the files and folders you want to restore. Then go through rest of the restore proceedure to retrieve them. Hope that helps.

SOLUTION: Stop Retrospect's long loading time. This is my method: 1) In Media Sets panel: find all your old media sets, that are not currently accessible at the moment and tick the lost button next to each member. 2) In Sources panel: This is the important bit, delete all your old backup destination sources, especially sources that are over a network, such as NAS drives (network hard disks). These actions can usually be easily re-instated, should you need to do a restore, so no harm done. This will cut down the time taken for Retrospect to load up, by a huge margin.

I know WHY this happens... cos it happened to me. It seems to especially effect NAS disk backups, and it's to do with how Retrospect 'sees' them on the network. What I mean by that is: when you start a backup to a NAS drive, do NOT mount it on your desktop. Retrospect can find and backup to it fine, without mounting it. If you do a backup with the NAS drive mounted, and the 'no media' error appears, you'll have to rebuild the catalogue. Otherwise if it is a normal desktop hard disk (connected via USB/Firewire etc), and it suddenly doesn't recognise the backup, it might be that you've connected the drive through a different type of connector. Just reconnect to the other port on the drive, if it has one. Or, the drive may be developing bad blocks on the disk platters, in which case start another member on the same drive, to bypass them – if you know the drive is good, and Retrospect is just being overly cautious. So long as your member backups are intact, you'll be OK, but a catalogue rebuild may be necessary in future, if the 'no media' error reappears again. Whether it's a bug or not, who knows, but this is the solution.

You are backing up 150GB, that's a lot - it'll definitely take some time, especially over FW400, so about a day would seem right. I've had experience with a FW400 backup device, and it isn't especially fast. Remember that copying stuff generally takes about 4-5 times longer than verifying the same amount of data. Of course it'll take a long time, if most of your data consists of small files, e.g. under 1MB each. At the same measure, very large files will also slow it down, especially if you're using compression as well. Be patient, if that's the only type of connection you can use, otherwise try using USB2, that should be faster still, if you leave the Mac alone to do the backing up. As for the way to check it's progress, just click on the top item in the Activity area, this will show how has been copied, and what is left to do.

I've finally managed to update the Engine to v10.5 - hurray!! However, the way I managed to do this is somewhat surprising... I opened the Retrospect console app by right clicking it and selecting 'show package contents', went into the 'Resources' folder, and then to the 'updater' folder. And ran the package called 'Retrospect Engine Installer.pkg'. Voila! If you then open your System Prefs window you should see the version change to v10.x.

I"m afraid it IS'NT inside the DMG file, certainly not as a separate installer or app. So unless Retrospect has hidden the Engine it inside the console app, I've no idea where they've put it. In the meantime, I'll dig a bit more, to see if it can be found/installed.

OK, thanks for the advice. That would explain why it all 'went up in smoke' as it were! I'll remember that for later. :boxie:

I've just recently been using v8.0(736.1), and have done about 7 individual sessions to my main backup set, and was about to use it again today, however the program asked for my licence code again (which I did when I first launched the program), so I typed it in, again. And discovered it's wiped out all of my media sets (these catalogue files are still on the hard disk, thank god), rules, favourite folders, and activities - I thought, what the hell!! So I've reset up the rules, media sets were 'reimported' and favourites as to how they were. The question is; did I missing something or is this a bug?

Hi all, I've only just bought v8.0 (build 736.1), and I don't seem to be able to find a compression option like there is on v6.1 - am I missing something, or is it on by default? Also, DVD-RAM disks are these treated as 'Disk Media Sets' or 'Optical Media Sets'? I suspect Disk Sets should be used.

2nd answer by Mayoff: Yes that did the trick. Thanks.

Perhaps instead of exporting the rules, which can't be done anyhow in v6.x. Retrospect 8.x may be able to import the rules directly off Retrospect 6's files/prefs, rather like Apple's Mail application can do from other email apps, in a future version!? Just a thought - it may be possible.

This may be way too simple a solution, but... have you tried just setting up a script for each backup set & associated source folders/disks, that way there can be no mistakes in the script as to the destination and source locations. If this doesn't alter anything, then it maybe there's a bug in the program. I only say this, because I've had no problems backing up to disk (DVD-RAM), and spanning them over 2 or more disks, so far! Just my 1p worth!

Just updating you all... starting my first backup, via scripts, all seems fine so far. To my surprise, even doing a manual backup creates a script! I think Retrospect 8 needs some fine tuning in the need version, not surprising, ie. the fore mentioned compression option, and 2 NEW ones: 1) needs the backup disk recognition to be a bit faster; 2) For some reason, a favourites folder within the System Libraries, eg. preferences, does not show up in a pre-made script!? :confused2:

There is another option called 'Match only files in same location/path', which is fine tuned to only copying files that have changed in that folder to the backup set, and will ignore any same named files elsewhere. The one you mentioned will match and ignore any file in any location in your source disk which has the same date stamp on it. In other words it's a more generalised matching scheme.

Just to clarify the compatibility issue of v6.1 with Leopard; you need to be using, at least version 6.1.138 for Retrospect to work. There is a later version 6.1.230, that you can download. - For those who may not know this - Where to find the version number - go to the Retrospect menu and select 'About Retrospect...' feature, it says the version under the logo. Also, via the Get Info window from the Application's icon - press Apple+i. AS FOR THE DVD-R/RW PROBLEM... Read the Read me file - it states: Activating optical device support in Retrospect 8.0 Optical device support is [color:red]deactivated[/color] by default in Retrospect 8.0, because Retrospect 8.0 will lock out all other applications from being able to use the optical drive. To use an optical drive with Retrospect 8.0, you will need to open the following file with a text editor (such as TextEdit): /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/RetrospectEngine.bundle/Contents/MacOS/retro.ini Change the DisableOpticalDrivers setting from 1 to 0. Save the retro.ini file and use the Retrospect System Preferences pane to stop and restart the Retrospect engine. Note that Retrospect may not be able to see an optical drive that has been captured for use by VMware Fusion or Parallels. If this doesn't solve the DVD issue you'r refering to then please ignore me! I've not read the rest of the forums just yet.

Hi, This isn't the best solution, I'm about to write, but it will cut down on errors, and at the same time give you a written sheet you can refer back to for reference... 1) Go to the rules in Retrospect 6.1, display one of the rule sets on screen. 2) Use the screen grab area command (Apple+Shift+4) of the rules, do multiple grabs if it cannot be done in one go. 3) Stitch the image together in an image editor, and print out. 4) Load Retrospect 8, manual insert all rules. It's a long way of doing it I know, but if no one can suggest a better way, then that maybe your only option.

Cheers Impala. [To EMC2 Retrospect people] So I have to run a script to get compression on my backup!? (tut, tut) I have to say that this is not very user friendly - what was wrong with having a setting in the preferences panel? Surely that was much easier to switch on and off when needed, than having to do it via a script, which is too rigid!!! Come on Retrospect programmers, you can do better than that. Anyway, that's my 2p worth.

Hi, The answer is to get the users to rebuild their Entourage files (press and hold option/alt key) when loading Entourage, and that will compress the database files down somewhat. It would also be helpful if they bin all old or out of date emails, before compressing the database files, especially ones with large attachments, as these will be the ones that are creating such large files in the first place. Then when they're happy that all emails are OK, when you open Entourage, they can then bin the files with 'Old' in the filename. This will reduce the backup size considerably.

I believe this may be caused by disk errors on the source volume, ie. your hard disk. Suggest you do a disk repair first before doing the back up again. Or, the DVDs you're using may be a bit dodgy.

It's starting to sound like you have a problem with the Firewire port on the Mac that's doing the backups. The FW port has become faulty or a firmware issue on the drive itself. Even if the port is working fine, some sensitive apps, especially progs that communicate with the hardware directly, do not properly 'handshake' with the drive correctly, causing errors. Also can happen if the drive's firmware is not up-to-date, or not plugged in firmly enough. Your only course of action is to use the FW 400 port as others have suggested, until you can find out what is causing the problem.

You could reduce the amount of data backed up by backing up only essential data, and not system & app files. If you're already doing this, ignore this paragraph. As for speed problems, you're not alone, I use an external firewire 400 DVD-RAM drive, and that is quite slow sometimes, averaging about 15-20MB/min (off the top of my head). You should be aware that performance of backups is coupled with your Mac's CPU speed, data bus speed and through-put of any networks you have. So you will have to accept a speed loss no matter what you have! Although I have to admit that Retrospect Desktop v6 is quite a bit faster than v5 ever was. My point; is to either minimise how much you backup or upgrade your system and backup devices, if you really need faster backups.

Hi, The bit in the error message that peeked my interest was "can't open library: /System/Library/CoreServices/Encodings/libGreekConverter.dylib". This suggests that there is a problem with that file in that folder. If it is of any use, that file should be 14,036 bytes. Have you tried rebooting your Mac, and having another go with your backup.

To Dantz... I wonder if Retrospect v6.x will be have problems with the new OS, 10.4 'Tiger'. Or will there likely to be any compatibility problems with it?