scotty321 Posted May 18, 2009 Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 Time and time again with Retrospect 8 -- yes, even with last week's newest update -- we keep getting the error "waiting for media" whenever we try to manually run a backup to an external hard drive. Oh, it runs for a few days okay, then it decides that it doesn't want to work anymore. The media is right there, ready & accessible! Can somebody please tell me why Retrospect 8 is giving this erroneous error messages? There is PLENTY OF ROOM available on this external hard drive -- there's something like 80 GB of space available on the external hard drive, and only a few GB of stuff has changed on our home folder (which is what is being backed up). Even if the WHOLE home folder was being backed up, the entire home folder is only 21 GB. We could fit 4 home folders onto this external drive. But Retrospect 8 keeps INSISTING that it is "waiting for media". even though it is right there. WHY!?! Retrospect 6 gave us no problems for years, and now, NOTHING works in Retrospect 8. This is the worst product upgrade in the history of Mac software. Can somebody please help? We paid good money for this product, which is a bad product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty321 Posted May 18, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 (edited) Here's the problem, I just noticed: Retrospect 8 thinks that there is only 22 GB of space on this external hard drive, WHICH IS NOT TRUE. It says: "Used 22 GB, Free 0 GB, Capacity 22 GB". It says this in Retrospect's "Media Sets" window. What the !@#$%?? This is not true!! This is a hard drive with 80 GB of free space on it. This hard drive has NOTHING ON IT except the Retrospect backups. I'm looking at it in the Finder, and there's PLENTY OF SPACE on it. Why is Retrospect 8 the worst piece of software in the history of software? Edited May 18, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted May 18, 2009 Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 Most likely, there was only 22G (or slightly more) of free disk space when you set the disk media set up the first time? If you have more free space than that *now*, you should be able to do this to expand it: Media Sets --> --> "Members" tab. Click the "pencil" icon at the bottom, select your external drive and just hit "save". This will expand the media set to use more of your free disk space. Not intuitive -- but that's how to do it... If that doesn't work, then it's some other bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted May 18, 2009 Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 Is this a local disk or a network attached disk? Thanks Steve, you could be right but I have seen a bug similar to this problem too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty321 Posted May 18, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 This is a local hard drive attached via FireWire 400. Thank you so much, Steve. I should've waited for your reply so I could try that out, but in the last few minutes, I just completely erased the external hard drive and started from scratch again. I believe that this hard drive was already completely erased and empty before using it as a media set for Retrospect 8, so I don't think it only had 22 GB of free space when we first started using it. However, next time this happens -- if it does -- I will go through the steps that you outlined here. As you said, this is far from intuitive, but I appreciate you giving me these steps to try. Somebody at Retrospect really has to be looking into these problems. The old Retrospect 6.1 never gave any of these problems. I'm starting to wonder why they even abandoned Retrospect 6. So far, I haven't experienced even one single improvement in Retrospect 8... the whole thing has been one big headache and nightmare. Retrospect 6 worked just fine for years. There was no need for any of this reworking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted May 18, 2009 Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 If you started from scratch, you now have close to 80G in your media set, right? That would tend to bear things out that there might have been other stuff on the drive prior to the creation of your set. FWIW: For me, concurrent backups/restores *and grooming* have made most of the headaches worth while. YMMV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bioheath Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 (edited) Thanks for the info on this Maser. This is something I wasn't able to figure out how to do either. The interface needs an improvement here to make it more intuitive. In my case there was no bug, just more free space than was originally available as I continued deleting old files. To Retrospect development/support teams--Thank you. I am thrilled with 8.0, warts and all. If 6 hadn't been retired in favor of 8 I would have left Retrospect behind. If I were backing up a single home directory to a small external hard drive, I would probably prefer Retrospect 6 to 8 too. For those of us backing up tens or hundreds of clients with multiple local and (slow) remote media sets, the 8.0 features are incredibly important and immediately useful. Once they are polished up and made more reliable I hope to retire my 6 server and never think of it again. Edited May 19, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty321 Posted May 19, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 If you started from scratch, you now have close to 80G in your media set, right? That would tend to bear things out that there might have been other stuff on the drive prior to the creation of your set. It's possible, but that isn't how the old Retrospect worked and that isn't how the new Retrospect should work. If there's more space available on the disk, the catalog should fill to expand the available disk space. That's how it's always been and that's how it should always be. It shouldn't just look at the currently-available disk space and say "Oh, okay, that's the most space I will ever have to fill this disk." The Retrospect 8 engineers just didn't think this one through, and they reversed perfectly-working behavior from the past. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 I can see both points of view here. It's now nice to be able to have the option to say "I don't want my disk media set to grow over XXX Gigs in size" -- which is useful if you have multiple concurrent disk media sets in use (I do). But if you don't have more than one disk media set, I can also see why you wouldn't want a setting that allows it to just use all the available disk space -- but I think you can still do that with a "file" media set, can't you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty321 Posted May 19, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Oh, I see... that makes sense. I shouldn't have set this up as a "disk" media set, I should've set this up as a "file" media set. That was my mistake. That's what I'll have to do to fix this. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwbimm Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Oh, I see... that makes sense. I shouldn't have set this up as a "disk" media set, I should've set this up as a "file" media set. That was my mistake. That's what I'll have to do to fix this. Thanks! I've been using Retrospect for several years but I'm certainly no expert. I've just run into the same problem as scotty321 and I didn't know that the problem was that I had created a "disk" media set instead of a "file" media set. The R8 "Getting Started Guide" convinced me to use the disk media set. I think a bit more info on each media type for non-experts (like me) would have been helpful (e.g., "you might want to use the file media type if you have this type of setup..."). All-in-all, I like the R8 interface better than the truly cryptic R6 interface. My setup is pretty simple, though: MacPro upstairs (OS 10.5.6) with 2 external FW hard drives (one always off-premises), each HD has 4 partitions MacBook Pro downstairs (OS 10.5.6) Airport Extreme router connecting to 'puters via Ethernet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Retrospect 8 users are better off using Disk Media Sets in the long term. I think the problem reported in this thread and others is a bug. http://forums.dantz.com/showpost.php?post/122642/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 Retrospect 8 users are better off using Disk Media Sets in the long term I have to disagree with this as a blanket statement. Yes, Disk Media Sets have compelling features that make them more powerful in most all regards. But what has always ben powerful about File Storage/Backup/Media sets is the integration of the catalog and the data. Depending on the user's needs for access, for speed, for versatility of storage, having all the digital data necessary for a Restore in one place (without the need to take time to rebuild a catalog) can be a compelling feature. Perhaps Fast Catalog Rebuild really is fast; I haven't tried it yet. But for limited data-sets in specific situations, I can see how a File Media Set might be better. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwbimm Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 Retrospect 8 users are better off using Disk Media Sets in the long term I have to disagree with this as a blanket statement. Yes, Disk Media Sets have compelling features that make them more powerful in most all regards. But what has always ben powerful about File Storage/Backup/Media sets is the integration of the catalog and the data. [sNIP] Dave How is it possible that I've used R for so many years and I don't really understand what Dave is saying? I guess I'm just one of those users who's a near-backup-novice but really likes the fact that R can backup a network volume that doesn't have file sharing enabled (i.e., doesn't show up on the desktop of computers in the local network). Who else can do this in R's price range? All I know is that "disk" media backup has started asking for additional media, and that's not what I wanted. So, I (like scotty321) justed erased that partition on my external hard drive and created a "file" media backup. I have no interest in adding additional media. I just want R to keep making the !%#%^&**# backups. Hopefully "file" media backup will work for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 How is it possible that I've used R for so many years and I don't really understand what Dave is saying? Because Retrospect for Macintosh never had the Disk set feature before now. I have no interest in adding additional media. While spanning to additional media is one of the important features of Disk sets, another good thing is Grooming. As a long time File set user you know that after you've made a lot of !%#%^&**# backups the file can become too large, and the only way to proceed is to Recycle it. It's at that critical time, when you have essentially erased your backup but have not yet done another, that you are unprotected. You can get around that by having another backup (either on the same physical media if you've timed things correctly, or on another) but it still cuts into your backups. My point was only to suggest that Disk Media Sets might not _always_ be better; it's reasonable to suggest that they might _usually_ be better! Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwbimm Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 (edited) While spanning to additional media is one of the important features of Disk sets, another good thing is Grooming. As a long time File set user you know that after you've made a lot of !%#%^&**# backups the file can become too large, and the only way to proceed is to Recycle it. Dave Yes, that's exactly right and it's always been a pain. I _should_ have set up the file media backup to be groomed, but I was just too damned tired last night to deal with it. Apparently you can't change that (Media Sets>Options) after the script has been created, since grooming items are greyed out. I guess I'll erase that script and hard drive partition and try again. Edited May 20, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wdroome Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 Retrospect 8 users are better off using Disk Media Sets in the long term I have to disagree with this as a blanket statement. Yes, Disk Media Sets have compelling features that make them more powerful in most all regards. But what has always ben powerful about File Storage/Backup/Media sets is the integration of the catalog and the data. Depending on the user's needs for access, for speed, for versatility of storage, having all the digital data necessary for a Restore in one place (without the need to take time to rebuild a catalog) can be a compelling feature. Although the developers discourage it, you can keep the catalog together with the backup data. I'd been using file backups in Retro 6, and I switched to disk media backups for 8. I create a top-level folder called "Retro 8 Backups" on my backup drive, with folder "Catalogs" under that. When creating a disk media set, I tell retro to put the catalog under Catalogs, and when I create the first (and probably only) member, I point retro at "Retro 8 Backups." It's worked fine so far. The advantage is that instead of having one continually-updated 100+ gb file, I have a lot of write-once 600 mb files. That makes it practical to copy the backup files to some other disk for off-site storage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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