-34 (volume full) One backup set -- now what

[alanackerman]

I've been backing up daily all files on my internal hard drive to a backup set on an external hard drive. (I also make weekly duplicates and swap them offsite.) Now I get -34 (volume full) on the daily backups. Looking at the drive, it is full -- of one catalog and one backup set.

 

Now what do I do?

 

I could buy a larger hard drive, of course, but short of that what can I do?

 

I tried adding another backup set on another partition, but I still got the -34 error. Is it possible to overflow to a second backup set?

 

I tried creating a new backup set on another partition, but now I have two copies of all my current files, which seems wasteful.

 

I could unpartition the external hard drive -- but that will erase my backup set.

 

Is there any way to weed out older files? Or remove system files from the back up set?

 

Retrospec Backup 6.1.138

Mac OS X 10.4.11

flat panel (G4) iMac

[rhwalker]

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Is there any way to weed out older files? Or remove system files from the back up set?

 

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Sadly, no. Retrospect for Windows has "grooming" (and has had it for years), whereby older files can be removed that are no longer present in later snapshots, but that feature is not present in the Macintosh version. Submit a "feature request" to have that included in some future version of Retrospect for Macintosh. I have never seen a feature request implemented in the past 15 years. Good luck.

 

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I tried adding another backup set on another partition, but I still got the -34 error. Is it possible to overflow to a second backup set?

 

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It is possible to have "removable disk" backup sets span volumes, but not "file" backup sets. You don't indicate whether your backup set is of type "file" or "removable disk". Normally, the catalog is part of a "file" backup set, but it is possible to separate the catalog from the data file, either manually or Retrospect may decide to do it automatically if the file gets too big. See pages 22 and 35 of the Retrospect Mac 6.x Users Guide for a description.

 

It is not possible to change the type of a backup set once it has been created.

 

Let us know which type of a backup set you have and we can make some suggestions. Basically, if you insist on not getting another bigger drive, they will boil down to:

 

(1) move the catalog to another volume, that will give you some small amount of extra room, but really won't solve your problem.

 

(2) if your "another partition" is large enough, create a backup set there, "transfer" the contents from the existing backup set to that new backup set. You will have the option to select what gets transferred, and you might want to eliminate some system stuff, etc., that you would recreate from a ground zero restore, or you might want to eliminate some older files.

 

(3) if your "another partition" is large enough, create a removable disk backup set there, transfer everything to that, then blow away the current backup set partition, use that as an additional member of the removable disk backup set.

 

Note that "removable disk" backup sets take over the entire volume (partition). "File" backup sets do not, and can co-exist with other files on that volume, but file backup sets cannot span volumes (disks).

 

My advice, though, would be the conservative approach to buy a bigger disk, transfer the existing backup set to that (using Retrospect's "Transfer" option), and use that. This way, you could archive the older disk until you were satisfied that the new backup set was working. If you want, you could reformat (repartition) the older disk to a single disk, transfer everything back, and you would free up the new disk. In fact, if you can borrow a disk from someone to use for this process, you could return it to them after you have converted the original disk to a single partition.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Russ

[alanackerman]

Yes it is a file backup set.

 

By hard drive I mean a Firewire connected hard drive. It is 'removable' in the sense that I can unplug it and move it, but rather heavy. It is not a Zip drive or anything like that.

 

It seems I read somewhere about the ability to unpartition a hard drive in Disk Utility without erasing the files, but I could not find it when I looked. I know there are third-party products to do that. How trustworthy are they?

[CallMeDave]

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seems I read somewhere about the ability to unpartition a hard drive in Disk Utility without erasing the files, but I could not find it when I looked.

 

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It's a new feature in Leopard:

 

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html

 

Live Partition Resizing in Disk Utility

You may be able to gain disk space without losing data. If a volume is running

out of space, simply delete the volume that comes after it on the disk and move

the volume’s end point into the freed space.

[alanackerman]

I found the answer to my own question. Repartitioning is available in 10.4.6 and later, from the command line. See Nondestructively Resizing Volumes at <http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/cli/nondestructively_resizing_volumes>. I have not tried this, and make no guaranties! YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary.) Always take a backup before trying his, etc.

 

Which doesn't help much, since I want to make changes in order to take a backup. Vicious circle.

 

Typing "diskutil resizeVolume" (without the quotes) in Terminal gives some doc. It says:

 

resizeVolume is only supported on GPT media with a Journaled HFS+ filesystem.

 

Which I don't have, since I have a PowerPC Mac. GPT is a new partition scheme with Intel Macs.

 

I will try Russ Walker's option 2.

[CallMeDave]

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Typing "diskutil resizeVolume" (without the quotes) in Terminal gives some doc. It says:

 

resizeVolume is only supported on GPT media with a Journaled HFS+ filesystem.

 

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That's what it says in Tiger.

 

However, type the same syntax into a Leopard shell, and the resulting information now states:

 

resizeVolume is only supported on a Journaled HFS+ filesystem.

 

Connecting this external drive to a Leopard system might allow you to resize it quite easily.

 

 

Dave