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Hi,

Can any give me some insight into restoring eaxabyte tapes from retrospect 4. Here is what is happening. I have a SCSI exabyte 8505 tape drive and the only mac i have with SCSI is a G4 power PC 933, running OS 10.4.11 or OS 9.1.with an atto scsi card. If I boot in 9.1 it is missing the driver. If I run retrospect 5 or 6 in OS 10.4.11 it stops after reading 40meg or so. It reads back file names from the tape but it stops when I try to restore the data from catalog or rebuild the catalog from tapes. If I try to rum the trial version of retrospect 8, it will not open. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

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A few thoughts:

 

Although Retrospect 5.0/5.1 and 6.0/6.1 can theoretically read 4.3 (and earlier) catalogs and media, some people have reported problems. We never had any trouble reading our 4.3 tapes in Retrospect 5.1, though.

 

Was this the same tape drive used to make the tapes? Sometimes there can be an issue reading or decompressing tapes made with a different drive.

 

Tapes themselves don't last forever. Depending on how old the tapes are and their storage environment, you may be looking at damaged media. Have you tried reading different tapes from the same backup set?

 

Depending on the vintage of the tape drive, if it's too new it's possible that an early version of Retrospect may not be able to communicate with it properly, even when you've installed the latest driver update for that version. (Speaking of which, have you installed the respective latest RDUs?)

 

If you have a blank tape, you might try creating a new test backup set to see if you can write to and read from the tape drive. Running Exabyte diagnostics on the drive might also be useful.

 

Assuming that ATTO does not offer an OS 9 driver for whatever HBA card it is that you own, have you tried running Retro 4.3 in the Classic environment rather than booting directly into 9.2, in case the issue is a Retrospect version incompatibility?

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A few thoughts:

 

Although Retrospect 5.0/5.1 and 6.0/6.1 can theoretically read 4.3 (and earlier) catalogs and media, some people have reported problems. We never had any trouble reading our 4.3 tapes in Retrospect 5.1, though.

 

Was this the same tape drive used to make the tapes? Sometimes there can be an issue reading or decompressing tapes made with a different drive.

 

Tapes themselves don't last forever. Depending on how old the tapes are and their storage environment, you may be looking at damaged media. Have you tried reading different tapes from the same backup set?

 

Depending on the vintage of the tape drive, if it's too new it's possible that an early version of Retrospect may not be able to communicate with it properly, even when you've installed the latest driver update for that version. (Speaking of which, have you installed the respective latest RDUs?)

 

If you have a blank tape, you might try creating a new test backup set to see if you can write to and read from the tape drive. Running Exabyte diagnostics on the drive might also be useful.

 

Assuming that ATTO does not offer an OS 9 driver for whatever HBA card it is that you own, have you tried running Retro 4.3 in the Classic environment rather than booting directly into 9.2, in case the issue is a Retrospect version incompatibility?

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In OS 9.1. Retrospect it says no driver under the device status window, If I can download the drivers somewhere I would be happy to do so. Where can I find the latest RDU's for download? The atto card runs on the G4 933 in both

OS 10.4.11 and OS 9. The drive is the same one used to record the tapes.I believe I even used this 933 to make the tapes but I am not certain. In retrospect 5 or 6 on the 933, Retrospect sees the device but quits after reading 40 meg or so. I tried running it on my old quadra 650 with built in scsi, but retrospect says the old version (4.x) on that machine does not support tape drives. I tried 8 on the 933 but it will not run.

Thanks for your help,

Jeff

 

 

 

my last update for retrospect.

Retrospect Desktop v6.0 (1):

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The various Retrospect Driver Updates (RDUs) are available here. Tape support in Retrospect goes back at least to version 1.3, so the issue is only whether a specific device is supported within the app itself or within the available RDUs. To install an RDU, simply drag it into the same folder that contains the Retrospect app.

 

When you say that Retrospect "quits" after reading 40 MB, what exactly do you mean? That the app quits or crashes, that it freezes (cursor unresponsive; animated cursor "gears" not turning), or that there seems to be no activity? If the latter, how long have you waited before taking some action, and what action did you take?

 

BTW, it's not a good idea to post your license code in your messages.

Edited by twickland
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Where can I get the password and user name for the ftp links?

Ah, I see that some of the links on the updates page seem to take you to some kind of limbo between the old Dantz knowledgebase and the new Roxio support site. Instead of clicking on the name of the file, click on the link under the "Download" header that lists the size of the file and the download should occur without a problem.

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I would try version 5 under OS 9.

I am still having no luck with my restore. On OS 9.2 I have no driver for the exabyte drive for retrospect 5.0 or 4.3 express. None of the updates I have found work with it. On OS 10.4.11 running retrospect 6.0 or 5.0 express the program will stop restoring. The gears still turn but the drive stops and allows me to eject the tape. I have let it go for a couple of hours in this jammed up state but nothing changes. Is there a scsi driver for 5.0 express under OS 9.2 available? Is there a scsi update for 6.0? The updates I have downloaded produce the same negative result. I would prefer to use 6.0 on OS 10.4.11 but any system that works with my G4 933 is ok. Can I download a version 5.1 anywhere. There is a scsi update file on the web for 5.1 but 5.0 express rejects it.

any suggestions?

thanks,

Jeff

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It sounds like you've been trying a lot of versions. I would forget the Express versions, which are stripped down and for which update support seems to have disappeared. The RDUs for the standard Desktop and higher versions won't work with the Express versions.

 

Did you install the 6.6.101 RDU when you attempted to use Retro 6.0?

 

The Retrospect 5.1.177 installer is available on the same page as the other updates, along with its corresponding RDU, 4.3., and SCSI update. The License Code for Retro 6 should work with 5.1; they were originally shipped together on the same CD-ROM.

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It sounds like you've been trying a lot of versions. I would forget the Express versions, which are stripped down and for which update support seems to have disappeared. The RDUs for the standard Desktop and higher versions won't work with the Express versions.

 

Did you install the 6.6.101 RDU when you attempted to use Retro 6.0?

 

The Retrospect 5.1.177 installer is available on the same page as the other updates, along with its corresponding RDU, 4.3., and SCSI update. The License Code for Retro 6 should work with 5.1; they were originally shipped together on the same CD-ROM.

 

Thanks Tim,

I will give it another shot. I used the 6.6.101 but no luck. I am going to swap cables as well.

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