retrospect 7 upgrade. Time to upgrade.

[ShadeTek]

I have had an XP based Retrospect 7.7 attached to a Quantum Superloader 3 for 8 years now which has been working well until recently where the SL3 is not finding tape barcodes  and aborting back-ups as says it can't find them although they are sitting in the magazine.  Also, intermittent Hardware Errors and aborted back-ups.  I'm told the main CPU in the SL3 is probably the culprit so it is about time to move on and get a SL3 and an LTO7 tape deck.  My question is does the latest Retrospect handle 2 Superloader 3 attached via SAS as I was thinking that I could keep the old one running for a while longer on the new PC to finish off the LTO5 tape stock?  How easy id it to port the existing projects over to the new Retrospect?

[DavidHertzberg]

ShadeTek,

The automated answer to your first question seems to be "What's in your wallet?" 

First I went to the Device Configurator, selected "Quantum" and "SAS" and "Tape Library" in the columns, and clicked the Search button.  That told me the Quantum SuperLoader 3 was qualified for Windows on 8 September 2014.  Clicking the line for that specific product told me Minimum Product Required for Windows is Retrospect Single Server 7.0 with the 7.0.11.102 driver update.  It also told me "For certification purposes, Tape Drives and Tape Libraries are considered separate entities. Any Retrospect certified tape drive installed by the library manufacturer can be considered certified with the tape library."

So far apparently so good, so I went to the Product Configurator.  You didn't state any details about your installation, so I left the first popup at Windows Desktop and the other popups and checkboxes at their default.  When I set the last popup to "Yes, to a single tape library (autoloader)" and clicked Show Recommended Solution, it showed Retrospect Single Server Unlimited Workstation Clients at a price of US$1369 including ASM.  When I instead set the last popup to "Yes, to a dual tape library (autoloader)" and clicked Show Recommended Solution, it added Advanced Tape Support with ASM for a new total of US$2468. 

So the question you need to answer is whether it is worth an extra US$1099 to finish off the LT05 tape stock.  At roughly US$20 per LTO5 tape, you'd need to have 55 tapes in stock to break even considering sunk cost.  At roughly US$70 per LTO7 tape, you'd need to buy 16 additional tapes to break even considering additional investment.  IMHO you should speak with Retrospect Sales to find out whether having two single-tape autoloaders attached simultaneously is programmatically considered the equivalent of a dual-tape autoloader, because that is the key "money question".

As to your second question, I haven't the foggiest notion.  I used to use DDS with DAT72 tapes when I was running Retrospect Mac 6, but switched over to USB3 portable HDDs when I upgraded to Retrospect Mac 12 on a different "backup server" that didn't come with a SCSI card.