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Grooming multiple-disk disk backup sets


JamesOakley

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I have a problem with grooming disk backup sets that contain more than one disk.

 

Specifically, using Retrospect Professional 7.5 I have a disk backup set that has two members, both USB pen drives.

 

I started with the empty backup set. In time, the first drive filled, and I used the second. Then that filled, and auto-grooming kicked in, leaving a great deal of space on both disks. I was back to storing on the first disk again, but when that filled up... instead of it asking for the second disk, it auto-groomed again. There is space on the second disk (quite a lot), but I never get to use it, because whenever the first disk fills up it grooms.

 

Any advice?

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Thanks - that'll answer my question! I don't recall ever reading that detail in the documentation, but I'll make sure both are plugged in from now on.

 

Interestingly, when I first bought Retrospect, I was using a ZIP Drive with 250MB disks. I had a 9-disk backup set, and switched the disks one at a time. Grooming took forever! But I had no idea that it wouldn't be possible to groom correctly with this arrangement.

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Grooming is a relatively new feature and I don't ever recall anyone using it with a zip drive. Are you sure you used it with the zip drive? Recycle backup would have been more common.

 

Grooming removes data from all available disks. If the disk isn't available, then it can't correctly groom. As a result, the member will probably get marked as missing or skip by Retrospect.

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I thought I did, but it was a while ago so maybe I didn't. I certainly didn't do it more than once - the drive took about 20 secs to load or unload a disk. From memory, it asked for disk 1, then for disk 2, ..., disk 9, then went through that whole sequence 2 more times. Only if I told it that I had lost one of the disks would it mark it missing.

 

I think that's what I did. But Pen drives are much easier, so they're both plugged in happily.

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