Restore From Rdb Files Failure

[4211fdde-0be5-47df-a369-e52e0485be42]

Hi,

 

I've read multiple posts about this in various forums but alas I've been unable to get any of the suggested solutions to work for me.

 

The situation is that I had a machine running Retrospect 7.7 which had backed up a total of 2.44TB of data over a period of years, mostly videos and pictures of our children and wedding but also some essential work and personal finance spreadsheets. That machine died and when I came to restore the data I found that there wasn't a catalog file with the backup set. The backups are all stored on a 6TB NAS RAID drive, and they are file-readable so therefore not corrupt. As it happens there were some old backups stored on a different (smaller) NAS which go back further in time which are ALSO not available to be rebuilt, yet also file-readable.

 

What I've tried to do is a Repair Catalog using the "All Disks" option. I can navigate to the backups but when I press the "OK" button (NOT the "Open" button which I know just opens the next subdirectory rather than actually doing something) I get the message "The selected disk does not contain any Backup Set data files, please select another disk". Clearly it DOES contain rather a lot of data files, all named "AA0000xxx.rdb" but apparently not accessible to Retrospect. One of the other machines that had saved backups to that NAS drive WAS able to be rebuilt, so there is something specific about these backups that won't let me rebuild them.

 

The fact that catalog files are stored on a local machine even when a backup is done to a remote NAS does seem to me to be a bit of a strategic error. But what is much more concerning is that my ONLY backup solution doesn't appear to be a solution at all; I'm left with this huge amount of data that I can't retrieve no matter what I do.

 

I'm pretty upset for having paid money for a product that doesn't do what it's meant to, but I'm obviously a lot MORE upset that all my memories and those of my family have been lost.

 

Is anyone able to make any suggestions for how to retrieve at least some of this data? I've sent a note to the Tech Support people but so far haven't received a reply and I suspect the people in the forums are just as technically competent so am hoping one of you might be able to help.

 

Thank you.

 

(Files attached to show screenshots of the process and the backup directory)

[Lennart_T]

I think you should click "Open" once. The folder should be named "1-PRO_X6 main backup" (probably). Then you should be able to click "OK"

[airandspace]

Steps I used to to read old Retrospect backups on an external drive where the catalog is no longer available

Tools

Repair Catalog

Select Recreate from disks => OK

All disks

My Computer (or path to where Retrospect files are)

<select the required source drive>

<select a high level directory where files are>

OK

Retrospect will list a backup(s) from which to rebuild the catalog for example "Full P4 23 03 2009"

Select a backup => OK

Retrospect will then ask where to store the rebuilt catalog (a rdc file)

This new catalog file can be used with Retrospect Restore command to read files from the backup.