seedy Posted April 11, 2002 Report Share Posted April 11, 2002 I've owned RE 4 for years, done reasonably regular backups with it, but never had to use one of them. Last week the file corruption issue in OS 9.2.1 brought my G3 to its knees, and I realised I had a week-old RE backup of my files on CD. Sadly, the catalogue for that backup was on one of the hosed partitions. I used Norton Unerase to find the file, but got an error messge when I tried to restore with it. So, instead I spent 6 hours feeding the 9 CD's through the computer to recreate the catalogue. At last, I thought, my data will return, but no. Now the problem was that even though the backup was about 6GB, the little window in RE showed 13.somethingGB, just a bit more room than I had on my drive. So I found another drive, reformatted it, and tried to restore to it, thinking 15GB would be more than enough. Nope. Now RE wanted 15.something GB. So I had to remove a couple of items from the list so I could begin. Several hours later i am greeted by an error message, which tells me that there were 260 errors. On 9 CD's. Which is close to 40 errors per CD, actually more because we skipped two CD's because of the Hard drive space issue. I looked throught the list and the stuff that was damaged was appallingly important to me. And the final product weighed-in at about 6GB in the end as well. This story has a happy ending, but not thanks to Dantz. I decided to try DiskWarrior one more time, and after spending about 9 hours (overnight) it got my drive mountable and I managed to copy my data to another drive. I'm sure that there's a fix for this problem, and a Dantz rep is going to tell me how there's an upgrade I could have gotten and it would have worked. But I didn't know about it (using RE 4.1A, if it matters now) and Dantz didn't let me know that the upgrade was available, althought they found time to send me both email and snailmail ads for Retro 5. I heartily recommend DiskWarrior to all of you, and suggest looking at any other backup software. For example, FoldersSynchronizer works very well at keeping two drives updated, and only costs $30. It will work on a schedule as well, and has not given me any trouble. I am not affiliated with the author of FS. And we'll just see if you have the guts to treat my message honestly with a reply or just censor me into oblivion, in which case I'll take my case to the wider audience of the tech boards I frequent. I'm giving you a chance to tell your side before I do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 12, 2002 Report Share Posted April 12, 2002 Hello, I am sorry you did run into so many problems with Retrospect. I do see that you are running Retrospect 4.1 on Mac OS 9 which is not a compatible configuration. >Dantz didn't let me know that the upgrade was available Dantz did notify all registered users when Retrospect 4.2 was released. We then notified all Registred users when Retrospect 4.3 was released. At the time of the restore was the hard disk formatted for Mac OS Extended? If not, then the data would not have fit on the drive during the restore. Also, the following document in the Knowledgebase may have been helpful: Really Overflow the Destination During a Restore? Question: I have a backup set containing 2.3 gigs of data. I recently formatted my hard disk into two HFS Plus (MacOS Extended) partitions; one with 3.5 gigs and the other with 1.5 gigs. I wanted to "restore entire disk", selecting the 3.5 gig partition as the destination, but when I went to execute the restore, Retrospect displayed the message "really overflow the destination." I questioned that display because the data to restore in the "Files Chosen" browser window was only 2.3 gig and I had selected an empty 3.5 gig disk as my destination. When I looked at the "Files Chosen" summary in the "Restore from Backup" window, it read 4.2 gigs selected for restore. That seems very strange to me. What is happening? Answer: Well, the reason is that Retrospect (for display purposes only) assumes that the HD was initialized in Mac OS Standard format. This means that each file is displayed using a 512k block allocation size when the disk is actually using only 7k (MacOS Extended volume) block size. This causes all of the file sizes to appear inflated. Because the the user really does have enough free disk space, it will be safe to ignore the "overflow the destination" warning and complete the restore process. Retrospect will write data until the hard disk reports it has no space remaining. More details and screenshot examples on Allocation Block Size can be found at: http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=tn412 What types of errors did you actually get when trying to restore the data, we may be able to better explain what went wrong. Did you have an alternate set of backups containing the same data that could be used if once of the CD's was defective? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
composersue Posted April 12, 2002 Report Share Posted April 12, 2002 I've just upgraded to 9.2.2 and Retrospect Express can no longer back up to jaz (SCSI connection). It gets through about 880 mb on a disk and then gives me a "trouble communicating" error. The drive is fine, the disks are fine. I've upgraded the driver as well as the Iomega software. I've tried backing up with extensions off. Nothing changes. Everything was fine until the 9.2.2 upgrade. What's the problem here? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seedy Posted April 14, 2002 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2002 After I experienced the hard drive size issue I looked through Dantz's site and read that RE 4.1 was not usable with 9 so made an 8.6 partition to do the restoration from. The errors were both write and source errors according to the voluminous log. If I saved it you are welcome to it. All disks involved were HFS+, which is what I've used since it was available back in the OS 8 days. I received no notification that RE 4.1 would not work with OS 9. I checked the Dantz website periodically for updates, but have noticed only updates for Retrospect, none for RE beyond 4.1A. I acknowledge responsibility to keep my software up-to-date, but my point is that only when there is a paid upgrade did I receive notification. I read a list of Mac sites nearly every day, and recall nothing about Retrospect issues with OS 9. If Versiontracker listed an update for RE I went and got it. I did, however, ignore upgrades for Retrospect proper because one time I came to this site prepared to download an upgrade only to find out that it was only for Retrospect, and I believe there was a note on the page indicating that there would be no further upgrades for RE. Since I thought at the time, and still do, that $150 was a lot of money for backing up my small amount of data, I let it go. But there was no note on that page warning me that RE wouldn't work with OS 9. So, RE took a long time (1 GB/hr) to do a backup/verify, did not inform me until the end that there were 7 write errors on the 9 CD's I used, and then transformed those 7 errors into 260 errors when I wanted the stuff back. Some of the files are so corrupted that they crash the Finder in X when I try to preview or open them. Yet the ones on my recoverd disk open without a problem, so far as I can tell. There was no indication of where those 7 errors occured, there was no other option but to do the entire backup again and cross my fingers. I decided that since my installations were well-groomed and running smoothly that 7 errors would not significantly affect my workflow should I need that backup. Again, I relied on RE's version of the truth, and it was lying. And this is another things that gripes me: I could not use RE to back up to another hard drive, because that option was only for the $150 software (for only ~$70 one should not expect to be able to do such a thing, apparently). Now if I would buy RB5 I could do a backup to another hard drive, but apparently only if I am connected by the correct type of cable. If I use a SCSI (putting my Powerbook in SCSI disc mode) cable then it will work, but if I use an ethernet cable then I must again buy the more expensive version, because now I am networking. So, to sum up, here are the issues I have with Dantz and RE: 1) Was not warned that RE 4.1 would not work with OS 9. Since the software APPEARED TO WORK this would have been worthy of emergency-level notification. Seriously. 2) Limited choices of backup media (no hard drives) which are artificial, and which continues with releases to this day, as noted above. This also answers your question about whether I had an alternative backup, since RE itself limited me from doing so. 3) The backups themselves do not contain their own catalogue, which means that if the drive that contains the catalogue is lost, then all the disks must be fed through at a laborious pace to re-establish a catalogue. Also, while this process is going, RE will not automatically eject the disk, signalling the need for another one, but simply waits for me to discover that it needs one. I understand why this is so, because it needs to know when to finish writing the catalogue, but since it won't be writing to that CD-R anyway, why not eject it and then let the user either insert another one and/or deal with the "Is this the last CD in the set" dialogue box? Even a zen master would be tried by this behavior. 4) HFS+ vs HFS is not a large enough difference to account for RE requesting TWICE the size needed (the first time), and further nearly three times (6 GB into a 15GB drive, still needed overflow) when I made it a special disk.Whatever the issue is there, it is a serious bug. So while I depended on RE4 for years, my opinion now is that it's unreliable. This forces me to go look around for another incremental backup program, which I'd rather not have to do, but I can't see much choice. The only option Dantz leaves for me is to spend another $20 to see if the new version will work or not. $20 is a reasonable price, but not for something that doesn't work. Thanks for your time and for replying considerately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 15, 2002 Report Share Posted April 15, 2002 Hello, The following technical note has been on the Dantz website since September 1999 in the Service and Support area: http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=os9 Retrospect and Mac OS 9 Compatibility Bulletin Removable Disks Backup Problem There is a problem with Retrospect and Retrospect Express 4.1A and earlier when backing up to removables under Mac OS 9. Retrospect and Retrospect Express report error 100, 102, or 206 when backing up to removable disks (Zip, Jaz, SuperDisk, DVD-RAM, MO, etc.) under Mac OS 9 and the backup fails. This is a problem with Retrospect and Retrospect Express 4.1A or earlier, all later versions correct this problem. To upgrade to the latest versions of Retrospect and Retrospect Express that work correctly with removables and Mac OS 9, go to the upgrades and updates page for more information. Other Mac OS 9 Compatibility Notes Very Large Files: Retrospect reports error -1310 when attempting to copy files greater than 2 GB in size. Multiple Users Prevents Autolaunch: Mac OS 9's Multiple Users prevents Retrospect from launching automatically to execute its scheduled scripts. Before you leave the backup Macintosh, start Retrospect manually from within Multiple Users. This allows Retrospect to run scripts as scheduled. Backing Up with Multiple Users Permissions: Retrospect can back up or duplicate files accessible to the currently logged-in user, according to the permissions. For example, when a client is logged in as a limited user and Retrospect backs up a volume from the client, only the files and folders that this limited user can access are backed up. The workarounds for network backup of clients are to log out and leave the client in the login screen, or log in as an owner before backup. The workaround for local backups with Retrospect is to log in as an owner before backing up. Restoring or Duplicating with Multiple Users: Retrospect cannot restore or duplicate files to a Documents folder set to "write only" mode. Using Built-in Selectors with Multiple Users: Some of Retrospect's built-in selectors will not work correctly when a computer is logged in as a non-owner user. (For example, Documents & Hot Items will not mark files the user is not allowed to access.) The workaround is to use the All Files selector. Using Selector Conditions with Multiple Users: The following special folder selector conditions will not work properly in your custom selectors. * Apple Menu Items * Launcher Items * Desktop Folder * Preferences * Desktop Pictures * PrintMonitor Documents * Documents * Shutdown Items * Favorites * Startup Items * Help * Shared Documents folder * Internet Search Sites The workaround is to create custom selectors using name conditions to match these folders by name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seedy Posted April 19, 2002 Author Report Share Posted April 19, 2002 Funny thing, had forgotten about this thread but just got yet another email from Dantz advertising R5. So I came back for more. Now I've gotten at least two, possibly three emails from Dantz, recommending R5, plus a snailmail ad. The fact that the tech bulletin referenced above was available warms my heart. If I was only a "Retrospect Addict" I might have spent time going through tech bulletins on this site, just for interest. But since I am clean of this particular addiction I did not do so. And it is not really applicable to my situation anyway, perhaps meant for composersue, since I use a CDR drive, have only one user, and no files of even 500MB, much less 2GB. Since I'm not going to buy an update, why do I come back again? To remind Dantz that one thing a customer pays for when they buy commercial software (beyond the employee health plan) is a feeling that they are in good hands, that if there's an issue they will be notified and that issue will be remedied. Even good shareware (FoldersSynchronizer, for example) authors do that. You want to know why people pirate software? Here's a perfect example. I'm not saying that it's right, but software publishers live in a dream world: no one can return their software once it's opened and tried out. The music business has been putting great covers on lousy records for decades, and milking this same dream. So what happens is that people start deciding to try software first, to see if it really works, since a software publisher can claim anything for a product. Look at any backup software's feedback on Versiontracker, and you'll find some posters who could not get it to work, or had real problems figuring their way throught the interface. Do they get a refund? Nope. Do they start thinking about getting a warez edition of the next thing they want to try? Hmmm. Dantz, you have a very nice site here, and a kindly forum, but with a backup product by the time I come here it's too late. Something bad has already happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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