Can I safely downgrade from V15.61 to V12?

[x509]

Guys,

Is it safe for me to downgrade from V15.61 back to the last release of V12?  Will all my backups done by V15 still work in V12?  If it is safe for me to do that downgrade, I will ask Retrospect for a refund of my 15.6 upgrade.

I've been "silent" for a while now, because I have been spending a lot of time trying to deal with a script that broke in V15, and then I had a failed system partition restore on my main system, so i had to spend days (actually evenings and weekends) just reloading all my apps and doing all the necessary configurations.

The last straw was when I think I discovered that a backup script that involved several volumes was backing up only one of the subvolumes, but if I did an immediate backup, everything worked fine.  I need to do more tests when I get back home from this business trip and then document all these issues.  This new problem is in addition to a different script that worked fine in V12 but broke completely in V15.6.  I have spent way too many hours just doing what amounts for free quality testing for Retrospect, plus all the time I had to spend reinstalling Windows and apps after that failed Restore operation.  So I am royally p---ed.

As soon as I get home, I want to finish that testing and then write an email with a multi-page Word doc to Brian Dunagan, Chief Operating Officer.  I will include a list of all my support cases and the poor quality of those responses.  At this point, I have no confidence in support for their ability to deal with bugs or complex configuration issues.  I will also include pages of documentation, including screen shots, about the problems with backup scripts.

Thing about backup software is that it needs to do both backups and restores properly and without a lot of hassle.  That is fundamental.  My recent issues with Retrospect are that it is doing neither.  Features like the Dashboard are secondary, in my opinion.  I have been using Retrospect for over 10 years now, and I have never had issues like I have been with V15.6

x509.

Edited January 12, 2019 by x509
fix typos

[DavidHertzberg]

x509,

I suggest you look at the cumulative Retrospect Windows Release Notes that cover up to 15.6.1.104.  I administrate Retrospect Mac, but I didn't see anything for Windows version 15 that seemed to be changing the format of either Backup Sets or of the User Interface—those parts of it that don't use the version 15 new features—from version 12.6.

In the case of "a backup script that involved several volumes was backing up only one of the subvolumes, but if I did an immediate backup, everything worked fine", this sounds as if you were getting -530 errors on some of the machines that had the subvolumes.  If so, you may be able to fix that—at least temporarily—by moving your config77.dat file from its location (see pages 463-464 of the Retrospect Windows 15 User's Guide) to the desktop.

Other than that, I suggest you first phone Werner Walter, the chief of Sales, at extension 2 on whichever Retrospect Inc. phone number you use.

[DavidHertzberg]

x509,

If you were in fact getting -530 errors on "a backup script that involved several volumes was backing up only one of the subvolumes, but if I did an immediate backup, everything worked fine", you may instead want to look at this post in the Mac 9+ Forum.  I discovered two weeks ago that the real fix was to Remove and re-Add the "client" using Add Source Directly (using a fixed IP address).  (Back in early January I thought that the fix resulted when I moved the corresponding Retrospect Mac configuration file to the desktop—causing it to be regenerated, but several weeks of systematic testing convinced me that the seeming fix in early January really resulted because when I re-Added my "clients"—which regenerating the config file forced me to do—I re-Added them using Add Source Directly.)

The third bulleted list item in the post I linked to in the first paragraph of this post explains what Use Multicast means.  The "Piton protocol"  it refers to is explained on pages 290-291 of the Retrospect Windows 15 User's Guide, so it's not peculiar to Retrospect Mac.  As I asked in the last paragraph of the linked-to post, for you—or for other administrators who have "clients" either connecting for Proactive backups or connecting to the "backup server" over WiFi: does the LAN IP address of those "clients" change?

[x509]

On 3/1/2019 at 1:00 PM, DavidHertzberg said:

x509,

If you were in fact getting -530 errors on "a backup script that involved several volumes was backing up only one of the subvolumes, but if I did an immediate backup, everything worked fine", you may instead want to look at this post in the Mac 9+ Forum.  I discovered two weeks ago that the real fix was to Remove and re-Add the "client" using Add Source Directly (using a fixed IP address).  (Back in early January I thought that the fix resulted when I moved the corresponding Retrospect Mac configuration file to the desktop—causing it to be regenerated, but several weeks of systematic testing convinced me that the seeming fix in early January really resulted because when I re-Added my "clients"—which regenerating the config file forced me to do—I re-Added them using Add Source Directly.)

The third bulleted list item in the post I linked to in the first paragraph of this post explains what Use Multicast means.  The "Piton protocol"  it refers to is explained on pages 290-291 of the Retrospect Windows 15 User's Guide, so it's not peculiar to Retrospect Mac.  As I asked in the last paragraph of the linked-to post, for you—or for other administrators who have "clients" either connecting for Proactive backups or connecting to the "backup server" over WiFi: does the LAN IP address of those "clients" change?

I know it's just about two months since David's post (and unlike ihlo, I find David's posts very helpful), but I ultimately decided not to downgrade.  I discovered that I needed to prune out spurious 50 GB files from one dataset, and I also think I will use the transfer datasets features of V15.

I'm writing this very late reply because I feel that I owed David a courtesy of a reply and as a way of expressing my appreciation to him.  As for being very late with this reply, I'll just say that "life has been happening" for me, with all kinds of situations that delayed this response.  If something doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger, or so I would like to think.

 

x509

[DavidHertzberg]

x509,

Sorry "life has been happening" for you,  but welcome back to the Forums.

By "the transfer datasets features of V15", do you mean

Quote

Configuration Import/Export: Transfer options for transfer snapshot script now included (#5580)

or something else in a previous release?

Since the beginning of April 2019 I've been using Retrospect Mac 16.0.2.101.  One minor problem I've had that may affect everybody upgrading to version 16 concerns scanning Media/Backup Sets with a Recycle script.  I do this twice each Saturday as I Recycle the Set whose sole Member is on one of my three portable HDD drives (I'm very 20th century; I swap one of the drives every Friday in my bank safe deposit box, because until last October I didn't have the upload speed for Cloud backup—whatever that is ).  Early Saturday morning I run a Recycle backup of all my 6 drives, but 5 minutes before that is scheduled I still run—out of habit although it's no longer necessary— a "sacrificial" script that does the same backup for my first "client" with the No Files Rule/Selector.  The last 3 Saturdays I've found the scanning phase on the "sacrificial" script running very slowly, because of errors such as

Quote

!Error reading snapshot record at 61653107172u: wanted 11 MB, had 10.9 MB

Once I notice this is happening I pause all scheduled runs and stop the "sacrificial" script, then  do a Rebuild of the Media Set being Recycled, and have no further problem for the remainder of the week with that Media Set—even when doing the same Recycle with the afterward-un-paused "real" Saturday backup.  I didn't have the same problem when I upgraded to Retrospect Mac 15.6.1.105 in January 2019, and the problem may be peculiar to Retrospect Mac 16.  But be warned that, if any of you downgrade from Retrospect 16.0 to Retrospect 15, you may have to do a Rebuild of your Media/Backup Sets from the existing Members.

BTW, x509,  I noticed that in your post directly above this one you made the same mistake I made in this post in the thread where lhlo accused me of "condescension".  You initially thought the first letter of "lhlo" was an upper-case 'I' (the letter whose name  sounds like "eye") instead of a lower-case 'L'.  Maybe it would have been more polite if, instead of saying lhlo had picked a cutesy-poo "handle", I had merely suggested he/she either take a course in Human Factors or repeat the (Canadian equivalent of?) third grade.

[x509]

David,

I meant the ability to transfer backup files from one dataset to another backup dataset, in the interest of eliminating redundant file backups and simplifying the number of old datasets to store and maintain.

x509

[DavidHertzberg]

2 hours ago, x509 said:

David,

I meant the ability to transfer backup files from one dataset to another backup dataset, in the interest of eliminating redundant file backups and simplifying the number of old datasets to store and maintain.

x509

But Transfer Snapshots and Transfer Backup Sets have been in Retrospect Windows since 7.7, although there were some bug fixes as late as Retrospect Windows 11.5.  Am I missing something about your wish for Retrospect Windows 15, x509?

[x509]

Yes, I forgot to mention grooming a dataset with selectors.  I'm having a real issue with Retrospect ignoring a some folders that were explicitly excluded, and this grooming has allowed me to recover about 1 TB of wasted space on my 6 TB (5.45 TB in Windows) backup drive.  See this thread, particularly the last few posts.

x509

 

 

[DavidHertzberg]

7 hours ago, x509 said:

Yes, I forgot to mention grooming a dataset with selectors.  I'm having a real issue with Retrospect ignoring a some folders that were explicitly excluded, and this grooming has allowed me to recover about 1 TB of wasted space on my 6 TB (5.45 TB in Windows) backup drive.  See this thread, particularly the last few posts.

 

 

 

x509,

Isn't it rather ironic how the decision of some Brussels bureaucrats (with which I, as a computer user, generally agree) caused Retrospect Inc. to add a valuable new feature?  Of course there was a temporary price for Retrospect Windows administrators, as mentioned in the fourth paragraph of this post in another thread.

 

 

[x509]

Yes, ironic, but these days the Brussels bureaucrats are looking pretty good in comparison with the state of privacy affairs on this side of the pond.