Updated RDU, New drive works, old drive doesn't.

[Starbeat]

Hi,

 

We have a Lacie 300920 burner that is actually a NEC-3520 in a Lacie case. It is connected via firewire. It worked fine with Retrospect 6.1.126 without any RDU upgrades, including burning to DL disks.

 

However I recently replaced the internal G5 burner with a Pioneer 112-D. Retrospect wouldn't recognize it so I upgraded the RDU to the latest version. Retrospect than saw the drive and I figured all was good. However now when I put our DVD+R DL 8X media into the old Lacie drive it says the media is "Incompatible."

 

I did figure out that if I removed the RDU then the Lacie would read the DVD+R DL disks, but then the Pioneer 112 wouldn't show up.

 

In the course of trying to figure this out I upgraded to the latest version of Retrospect (.138) and that didn't help, either with the latest RDU or with no RDU, which is still a later RDU version than no RDU in Retrospect .126.

 

I tried the .101 RDU that introduced the Pioneer 112-D in Retrospect .138, that didn't help.

 

From reading some of the information on the site I figured I should upgrade the firmware on the Lacie. However the Lacie updater wouldn't do it and when I emailed them they said try to flash it using alternate means as their flash program doesn't support the drive. I'm about to try that by hooking it up to a PC and updating the firmware using NEC firmware, but I'm wondering if there is anything else to try before I do that?

 

Throughout all this, regular DVD media still works. I should probably try to try different DL media but as it's the RDU update that breaks the burner...

 

Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

Alex

[rhwalker]

Um, could you please provide the exact RDU version that you are using? You don't say.

 

You might also try reverting to an earlier RDU. The complete version history is here:

RDU version history

 

Another thing to consider is whether you ever tried to "manually configure" the drive. If so, you will have a .rdi file in /Library/Preferences/Retrospect and you might try moving that file to your desktop (so Retrospect won't find it when it launches) and try again.

 

Russ

[Starbeat]

Sorry, I am using RDU 6.1.14.101, the latest one. When I mentioned I tried the earlier RDU that implemented the Pioneer 112 as well, that was RDU 6.1.11.101.

 

I looked up using NEC firmware to flash my drive and they say not to use it for firewire drives and also mention it probably won't solve software problems.

 

I tried to manually configure once recently and it just hung, not sure about the past. I will attempt what you mention with the .rdi file.

 

Thanks for your suggestions!

[rhwalker]

I tried to manually configure once recently and it just hung, not sure about the past. I will attempt what you mention with the .rdi file.

Ok, that could be related. Let us know the results and we can try going from there.

 

Throughout all this, regular DVD media still works. I should probably try to try different DL media but as it's the RDU update that breaks the burner...

The issue is that Retrospect uses different commands to burn CDs/DVDs than the Finder and other programs do so that the media can be left open for updating rather than only giving you one burn shot (as other programs do). Retrospect uses "packet writing" rather than the more standard "track at once" commands. Not all drives support the commands that Retrospect needs. And there's the complication that some of the recent RDU have had, shall we say, issues. Regarding the commands, see:

Retrospect packet writing

More on Retrospect packet writing

Retrospect and media

 

Hope this helps,

 

Russ