jethro Posted September 3, 2008 Report Share Posted September 3, 2008 Hi, I'm wondering if this would be possible... We are backing up to external firewire HDs. Our current backup member (HD volume) became full, and Retrospect was asking us to add another member to this backup set. So we eventually got another drive (couple weeks), and allowed Retrospect to create the next member on it and do a scheduled main backup for the first time in a few weeks. I believe there was probably 10GB+ to back up. But in looking at the previous HD volume, I remembered that I had put a separate Retrospect Data file from our secondary backup set on it temporarily because we were having trouble with the other set's drives. It was just as a safety precaution. But I can delete this file and recover almost 150GB on this drive now! - So, since Retrospect has created the next member, and done one initial backup to it, is there any way I can go BACK to the previous member (volume) now that I've freed up a lot more space on it? Thanks. With the price of drives & such, I just hate thinking that I'm wasting 150GB on the previous HD. That would be a few months worth of backups for us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted September 3, 2008 Report Share Posted September 3, 2008 As long as the disk is not marked as missing or "skip", then Retrospect should be able to utilize both disks automatically if they are both on line at the same time. Retrospect will look for space on both disks. It will definitely do it when grooming is turned on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 3, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2008 Hmmm. I'll give it a shot. Will it be obvious what drive it is choosing? What if I disable the newer member? I'll look into what 'grooming' is. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted September 3, 2008 Report Share Posted September 3, 2008 You can't easily tell which member it is using. You could try marking the 2nd member as missing. You could also just do a catalog rebuild of the 1st member and don't rebuilt the 2nd member to eliminate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted September 3, 2008 Report Share Posted September 3, 2008 Sorry for the confusion. I take back my replies. I thought you had the Windows version. Mac has no grooming and will not bounce between disks. You should do a catalog rebuild of the 1st member and not add the 2nd member. This might let you continue using the 1st. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 4, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 OK, thanks. Now, if the 'first' member we've been referring to is actually the second member in the current set, would I have to rebuild both of the first 2 members (and ignore the 3rd), or can I just rebuild the catalog on the second member only? Any dangers in rebuilding the catalog? Thanks again for the quick help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 If you're going to rebuild the catalog, you would need to rebuild for all members prior to the ones you want to delete. Rebuilding can take a long time and sometimes doesn't run smoothly. I would do what Robin suggested earlier: mark all members after the one you want to revert to as "Missing." Retrospect will then ask for a new volume to add to the backup set. Although this new member will be numbered with the member number next higher than the last member you forgot (i.e., if you have 4 members and forget members 3 and 4, the new member will be numbered "5" and not "3"), it should otherwise do what you want. This would be a lot faster and less of a hassle than rebuilding the catalog. You would then be free to erase the member volumes you marked as missing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 4, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 Hmmm. Yeah, I did begin trying to label the new member (in my case, 3) as 'missing'. And then, yes, it did ask for a new member with a number next higher in line (in my case, 4). But I don't want to add yet another new member - I want to continue using the previous member (in my case, 2). I had the #2 member drive mounted on the computer before I tried this, but it seemed to still want a 'new' member. I was afraid to let it continue in case it would erase the current member as it usually does when adding new. When examining the members in the set, it does show my #2 member now with the correct amount of space used (350GB out of 500GB). I guess if doing a catalog rebuild is the only way, I may try that. Not concerned about the time it takes. I was just concerned about anything getting messed up. And is it obvious enough how to 'disallow' the 3rd member? Thanks again for the help. If it's too much trouble or danger, I may just lose the extra space. But I'd really rather not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 I was just concerned about anything getting messed up. And is it obvious enough how to 'disallow' the 3rd member? When Retrospect rebuilds a catalog, it is starting over from scratch and has no idea how many members there are in the backup set. After rebuilding the catalog for a given member, it will ask if there are any more members. Just click on "No" once you have rebuilt as many members as you want. For safety's sake, I would move the existing catalog to some other location on your hard drive volume so that you can retrieve it in case something goes badly with your rebuild. As an aside, what you are trying to do would be easy if you had backup copies of your catalogs. You could then restore an earlier copy of the catalog and then simply update it to include any files that were added after the catalog was backed up. We back up to 3 different backup sets. Each backup set contains backups of the catalogs of the other two backup sets, made at weekly intervals. In a worst case scenario, we would only have to update 13 days' worth of files if a backup set catalog gets corrupted, and it would usually be much less. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 4, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 Great. Thanks for the clarification! That's exactly the conclusion I was coming to. I will check to see if we back up the catalog file. I seem to recall it being a preference, but I'll have to double check. If I do find a backup catalog before the the new member was added, I guess I'll restore that catalog file and then erase the new member and save it for later. Thanks again for the help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 I will check to see if we back up the catalog file. I seem to recall it being a preference... Nope; not a built-in function of the program. You have to treat it as you'd treat any other valuable electronic data file (along with your Retrospect Preferences file, which is another oft-forgotten bit of bytes that should be backed up). Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 And, as an oddity, if the catalog is stored on a volume that IS backed up, the catalog will be backed up in its state BEFORE the current snapshot has been started. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 Well, I did check and the catalog file was SUPPOSED to be backed up, but when I searched for it I found nothing. In our main backup script, I have the entire Retrospect 6 folder set to be backed up. Inside of that are our 2 main backup catalogs (A & . We haven't used the B backup set in a while (hard drive issues), but we've been using the A backup set all along. Oddly enough, when I searched for the catalog files, the only ones that could be found were for the B backup! Now I only searched on the A backup set because our B backup catalog got corrupted (I suppose I 'could' restore that and search again). - Would Retrospect not be able to backup a catalog file to the same set that it is catlogging? I'm guessing the file would be constantly updating as the backup is happening, so maybe it can't be backed up simultaneously. Anyone??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 Well, I was able to get an older B catalog set to search, and sure enough - there were all of my A catalog files! Unfortunately, they are too old now to be useful. - For the future, is it possible to backup a catalog file to the same set that it is currently catalogging? Thanks! Looks like I'll have to go through the loooong process of rebuilding the catalog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 For the future, is it possible to backup a catalog file to the same set that it is currently catalogging? No. As I mentioned above, we rotate our backups through three backup sets. This is for redundancy and also allows us to keep one set off-site. Each backup set contains copies of the backup catalogs of the other two backup sets. Using only one backup set is better than nothing, but is not as safe as you might really want. Consider seriously where you'd be if an important member of your single current backup set became unreadable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 - For the future, is it possible to backup a catalog file to the same set that it is currently catalogging? Yes and no. I answered this above: And, as an oddity, if the catalog is stored on a volume that IS backed up, the catalog will be backed up in its state BEFORE the current snapshot has been started. The problem is: (1) the backed up catalog does not include the last (current) snapshot; and (2) you can't retrieve the backed up catalog unless you have a catalog for the backup set. If you were able to retrieve the backed up catalog, you would have to update it to include the last snapshot. Point being: If you didn't have a catalog (lost everything but the backup set), you would have to rebuild the catalog from the backup set in order to retrieve the backed up and out-of-date catalog. So, you need to back up the catalog using separate means, and the real answer to your question is "no". One approach is to schedule a "duplicate" to save the catalog to some other media after the primary backup is done. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 And, as an oddity, if the catalog is stored on a volume that IS backed up, the catalog will be backed up in its state BEFORE the current snapshot has been started. This is an oddity I've never seen. Whether our tape backup set catalog has been stored on the boot volume or another backed-up volume, the catalog for the current destination backup set has always been ignored and not been backed up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 Interesting, twickland. That's what I get for responding without doing the check. It USED to work the way I described, back in 1992 and for a long time after, but, when I checked our backup tapes moments ago, the current backup set's catalog is not backed up in the current snapshot. Perhaps that's an artifact of the fact that it is an open file during the backup. I just overlooked this in the many hundreds of catalogs going back to 1992 that are in the snapshot view. I know that it used to work with this oddity because I was confused during my initial testing of Retrospect 2.0, when the restored disk didn't exactly match the backed up disk, which caused me to scratch my head a bit until I realized what was happening (that the older, unmodified, catalog was on the disk, being backed up). That's when we added a final step to copy the catalog off to a different volume after the backup was done. My apology, that's what I get for replying before verifying. Oh, well. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 (edited) OK. Thanks for all of the replies. We did have 2 rotating backup sets (A + for most of the time we've done backups. But sometime earlier this year, some of our drives starting having trouble around the same time. It appears that their firewire busses were going bad, but we weren't able to fully figure it out. The A set is the only one that has kept working, so we at least wanted to keep something going. I did start doing a manual catalog rebuild last night, and this morning when I checked, it is ONLY 45GB OUT OF 450GB ON THE FIRST DRIVE!!! This is over 12 hours! At this rate, it will take up to 5 days just to do the FIRST drive! So I guess I didn't realize it would be THIS slow. This first disk, however, is using USB. So hopefully if I decide to let it roll, the firewire disk would be better. But I'm not sure it would be smart to let the disk have continual activity for 5 days straight! Arghh! Didn't think this would be such a problem! Thanks again for the help. - So there's NO way for me to just delete that last snapshot/backup that we did from the catalog so it thinks it's back to where it was before I did it??? Edited September 5, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 So there's NO way for me to just delete that last snapshot/backup that we did from the catalog so it thinks it's back to where it was before I did it??? Not unless you're willing to wait for the release of Retrospect X, which is supposed to have this feature. I was able to get an older B catalog set to search, and sure enough - there were all of my A catalog files! Unfortunately, they are too old now to be useful. Are these from before the time that Backup Set A was last recycled? If they include any files from the current iteration of the backup set, you would be that much further ahead. (You would perform a catalog update rather than a full rebuild.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 Ahhh - Catalog Update??? Yes, these would be as of March of this year, so it should be well beyond the first member in the set. Please describe more about what to do so I can stop that poor USB drive before it explodes! THANKS! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 OK. I'm starting the Update Catalog process, and now it's COOKIN'. The older USB drive was clunking along at 50MB/min, the firewire cruises at 1700MB/min! I had the more recent drive already mounted, so it didn't ask me for the member - just started going. I'll say NO when asked for a new member, and hopefully that will do the trick. I'll let you know if I run into any snags. And maybe I'll try this same thing with our B backup set so I can try to recover that and start using it again with the new drive I was going to use for the A backup. I know we should be doing a rotating backup. Thanks again everyone for all of the help so far. This has been one of the most helpful forum experiences I've had - most of the time, I don't get any replies to my posts : ( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted September 5, 2008 Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 most of the time, I don't get any replies to my posts Unless you're also posting under another name, it looks as if all of the threads you've started on this section of the Forum have received replies of some sort. Some even by me! Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jethro Posted September 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2008 Yeah, I was mostly referring to other forums. I usually only post questions for pretty bizarre, tough problems that only seem to strike me (I'm usually able to figure out the typical ones). I just haven't had the time to learn Retrospect too well. Just wait until I get a TOUGH question... And the Catalog Update process completed and we are BACK IN BUSINESS! I was able to perform a backup to the drive that I had created the extra space in. THANKS! And through this, I was even able to do a Catalog Update on our older B backup set and get that back up and running! (it had previously stated that I needed a new member, even though the drive had 320GB of space left - I think it had gotten corrupt). So thanks to all, our backup system is 'back up' and fully functional! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.