Xfer Tape data to Hard drive and read them later from HD

[jclark 0]

I have switched to hard drives for all backups now and it is working wonderfully. My question is that I wish to sell/give away my tape setup ( AIT II 4 slot Library and the Mac that connects to it ) - but I would like to xfer all my tapes to another ( prolly several ) to external storage hard drive(s) for long term storage.

 

Can I do this ( read the old tape data ) within Retrospect, or do I need to get some software to be able to mount the tapes in the finder, and copy the data off to HD.

 

But then, will I be able to read the Retrospect data from from/through Retrospect from the copied data...?

 

I have Retro 6.1.230

 

jeff clark

[rhwalker 2]

Can I do this ( read the old tape data ) within Retrospect, or do I need to get some software to be able to mount the tapes in the finder, and copy the data off to HD.

Jeff,

 

Only Retrospect can read Retrospect backup sets because it's a proprietary data format. There is no way to mount the tapes in the Finder. Now, you might be able to get the bits off of the tape using something like BRU's tape tools (tape drivers) and standard Unix commands in Terminal ("dd if=/dev/rmt0 of=newfile" etc.), but you wouldn't be able to do anything with the bits once they came off the tape.

 

The way to do it using Retrospect is to use the "Transfer" command to "Transfer" from the tape backup sets to a new Retrospect backup set on your disk. There are choices to be made (File or Removable Media) for the Retrospect backup sets on disk, but it seems that you have probably been through those choices when you did the switch, so that topic won't be addressed here. See the Retrospect Users Guide for a discussion of the Transfer command.

 

But then, will I be able to read the Retrospect data from from/through Retrospect from the copied data...?

 

I have Retro 6.1.230

Ah, that's the question.

 

I will try to answer.

 

(1) Depends on what version of Retrospect made the tapes. If it was Retrospect 6.x, you will be able to read the tapes and transfer to Retrospect 6.x backup sets on your external disk drive(s), and Retrospect 6.x will be able to read its new (transferred) backup sets on the external disk drive(s).

 

(2) If the tapes were made with an old version of Retrospect, you may be up the creek right now depending on how old the version was that made the tapes. Search these forums for discussion.

 

(3) Depends on what you want to use to read the new (transferred) backup sets on the external disk drive(s). If the answer is Retrospect 6.1.x for Mac, you are set. If the answer is Retrospect for Windows, you are hosed because Retrospect for Windows uses an incompatible backup set format, and cannot read Mac Retrospect 6.x and prior backup sets. If the answer is Mac Retrospect 8.x, you are hosed for the present because, right now, Retrospect 8.x cannot read any other Mac Retrospect backup set except Retrospect 8.x, but it does have the same backup set format as Retrospect Windows. The ability to read older backup sets made with Mac Retrospect 6.x and prior is rumored to come at some future date.

 

Does this help?

 

Oh, by the way, you posted this in the wrong forum (this is the Mac OS 9 and earlier forum). Your Retrospect 6.1.230 does not run on Mac OS 9 - I suspect that you are running Mac OS X. You might ask future questions in that forum.

 

Russ

[jclark 0]

Yesss, I posted in the wrong form ( oops! )

Yes, running 10.5.6, Quad G5, 6.1.230.

Currently backing to multiple HD's, but would like to get the data off a few of the tapes still laying atound.

 

I guess that if I just re-create the catalog files to a hard drive, and keep Retrospect around, I ought to be able to peruse the data on the HD, and then copy a file I might be looking for to a different HD... gonna give that a try...

 

Any way I would like to have on HD the moral equivilent of what I have now ( by way of copying from tape ->HD ) as to what I have now by running Retospect to current HD's...

 

Doable?

[rhwalker 2]

Well, you don't need to "re-create the catalog files to a hard drive" - Retrospect will create the catalogs for the disk backup sets when you do the transfer. If you are getting rid of your tape drive, it's now or never to do the transfer because the catalogs won't do you any good in the future. They are the catalogs for the tape backup sets, and won't work on the disk backup sets. Just do the transfer; it's not a copy - think of it as a data pipe from one database (the tape backup sets) to another database (the disk backup sets). Retrospect does not store files in a Finder-accessible filesystem format. Again, it's a proprietary database format.

 

The problem with riding the Retrospect 6.x horse into the sunset is that it's a fragile beast now because of the age of its codebase (Carbon API, whereas current code uses the Cocoa API). If you have an Intel machine, it's also emulated PPC code on Rosetta.

 

Retrospect 8, when it stabilizes, is the wave of the future for Retrospect. Once it stabilizes, I would encourage migrating to Retrospect 8 because future Apple OS versions may not support Retrospect 6. As it is, much (perhaps all) of the instability of Retrospect 6 is because of Apple bugs in the Carbon API, and Apple has no interest in supporting code on the Carbon API or fixing bugs there. You don't want to be caught up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

 

Russ