Getting an old catalog compressed

[Ron Haines]

Is it possible to get Retrospect (11.5.3) to compress the catalog for a disk media backup set without doing a backup to the set or having the backup disks mounted? I have the catalog for last year's backups uncompressed and at 72BG I am sure I can save a useful amount of disk space by turning on compression in the media set settings, but I doubt ticking the 'Keep Catalog compressed' button will trigger compression of the catalog. The disks containing backups are in the cupboard and I would prefer to avoid having to unmount this year's disks just to get the catalog compressed. 

 

Thanks for any tips on how to get this done. 

[Lennart_T]

I just zip old catalog files using 7-zip.

Before the odd occasion when I need to access one, I just unzip them first.

[Ron Haines]

Thanks. Yes, I was thinking about that myself, and I will do that if I can't get Retrospect to do it. My feeling is that it would be neater to get Retro to do it so that if needed I can do restores and have it 'just work'. 

[twickland]

... I doubt ticking the 'Keep Catalog compressed' button will trigger compression of the catalog. 

Have you actually tried that? In earlier versions of Retrospect, selecting "Keep catalog compressed" would immediately trigger compression.

[Ron Haines]

If that worked it would be great, but I've now ticked "keep catalog compressed', saved the changed setting, and waited a few minutes and there is no sign of activity. The media set is still available, and there is nothing in the log to indicate that compression has started. The mod date on the catalog file changed, but that appears to be all that happened.