chkoppe Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 (edited) I just downloaded release 8.1.184 but was disapointed because of the still missing support for optical devices. The updated readme does not even mention the (never working) workaround to set the flag disabling opticals to 0. It just said opticals are not supported and blame apple for a bug. This maybe correct but does not help. I use a MacBookPro with internal Superdrive tagged as HL-DT-ST / DVDRW GSA-S10N as backup server. This configuration was supported by 6.1 and my backup strategy is bound to opticals. I upgraded to 8 with the intention to continue in this scheme. Following the discussion in this forum I had the hope that the june release will fix this problem. But now im still forced to use 6.1 because I'm not able to swich to a different media type. At least I need a timeline for providing optical support or better a version ignoring the the lockout problem. I can live with a locked out drive while the backup server engine is running but I cannot live without backup. Edited June 29, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 (edited) You can still enable optical support within Retrospect 8. We want users to have the best possible experience and until some of the needed APIs are working from Apple, we are not encouraging heavy optical use. Either way, backup to hard disk is faster and requires less user interaction. Activating optical device support in Retrospect 8.1 Optical device support is deactivated by default in Retrospect 8.1, because Retrospect 8.1 will lock out all other applications from being able to use the optical drive. To use an optical drive with Retrospect 8.1, you will need to open the following file with a text editor (such as TextEdit): /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/RetrospectEngine.bundle/Contents/MacOS/retro.ini Edited June 29, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chkoppe Posted June 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 I activated the device support in 8 and 8.1 but without success. I cannot see any difference in behavior with the disabled flag set or not. The retrospect console lists my HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA-S10N but after inserting a media nothing happens but the normal finder dialog poping up asking for a application to handle the empty disk. The Retrospect storage divices dialog shows my HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA-S10N but never a media. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chkoppe Posted June 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 Some additional information: With 8.0.733.1 I had tried to build a custom configuration which has shown that the server could access the drive. From the log: 6/12/2009 9:57:10 PM: Drive initialization test: Successful + Executing Deleting Retrospect Custom Configuration... at 6/12/2009 9:57 PM + Deleting custom configuration created for HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA-S10N at 6/12/2009 9:57 PM 6/12/2009 9:57:33 PM: No custom configuration is found 6/12/2009 9:57:03 PM: Execution completed successfully Total duration: 00:00:29 6/12/2009 9:57:47 PM: Disc information test: Successful Testing DVD+R media type 6/12/2009 9:57:47 PM: Write method 1 tests start 6/12/2009 9:58:31 PM: Write method 1 test: Successful 6/12/2009 9:59:28 PM: Read test: Successful 6/12/2009 10:00:00 PM: Append test: Successful 6/12/2009 10:02:07 PM: Read test: Successful 6/12/2009 10:02:10 PM: Write method 1 tests final result: Successful DVD+R media type is ready to be used with the drive 6/12/2009 10:04:16 PM: Disc information test: Failed This drive has been successfully configured to use DVD+R media. 6/12/2009 10:04:16 PM: Write method 1 will be used 6/12/2009 10:04:16 PM: Custom configuration tests: Successful + Executing Running Custom Configuration tests... at 6/12/2009 9:56 PM + Running Custom Configuration tests on HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA-S10N at 6/12/2009 9:57 PM 6/12/2009 9:56:39 PM: Execution completed successfully Total duration: 00:07:36 This looks not bad, but I'm not able to use the drive in normal operation. BTW: maybe it does not succeed fullly because a later try to delete the custom configuration stated that no custom configuration exist. I have not retested this with 8.1.148.1 until now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 We have documented details about 8.1 optical support at: http://kb.dantz.com/article.asp?article=9720&p=2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 Doing some digging and that specific drive does not yet have a native driver in 8.x. Our product manager has the same drive, so hopefully we can push to get supported added for next time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chkoppe Posted June 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 Thanks for the link describing the custom configuration process. I tried it again with 8.1.148 after the unsuccessfull test with 8.0.733.1. thistime it looks good again, but the storage devices view did not changed. I tried stopping and relaunching the backup server and after restart the drive reports the custom configuration and seems to work correctly. Maybe is worked in 8.0 too, because I'm not sure whether I restarted the server last time. Please update the article on optical support with the hint to restart the server. Maybe this helps other people triing to get their configuration work. I will try a backup next and give more feedback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chkoppe Posted July 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 (edited) Thanks for the support. I just successfully run a backup on a 3 segment optical media set. What is the advantage of native support in difference to the custom configuration I use now? Usability and convenience ofcourse. Performance too? Edited July 1, 2009 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 1, 2009 Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 Custom driver will usually be slower. Also when the final driver is released, that media may not be compatible with the release driver. You will need to keep the custom driver in place to read that media. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spin_c Posted July 2, 2009 Report Share Posted July 2, 2009 "Either way, backup to hard disk is faster and requires less user interaction." Forgive me for jumping in on this one. I also use Optical heavily for Archive Use, not back up. Surely using DVDs is a cheaper safer way to Archive files. If a DVD gets lost/damaged I lose 4.6GB of data (we do 2 copies anyhow) if I archive to a Hard drive and that gets lost/damaged I lose a hell of a lot more data. Am I missing a point here, should I use Retrospect to Archive files, is Retrospect really only geared to Backing up data? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 2, 2009 Report Share Posted July 2, 2009 Optical disks are very much linked to hardware. If the original optical drive fails, you sometimes can't read that optical disk in a different drive. Hard Disk and Flash disks are cheap enough now to own multiple rotating disks. Tape is also still very popular for archiving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spin_c Posted July 21, 2009 Report Share Posted July 21, 2009 Ok fair comment re the cheapness of Hard Drives, but why would I want to rotate a drive with Archiving Files. I am talking about Archiving to DVD not backing up to Drives. You mention Tapes are still popular, but are they not slower and more expensive than optical for archiving? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 21, 2009 Report Share Posted July 21, 2009 You can buy tape drives that can write well over 1000 MB/minute. That is not slow is it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted July 21, 2009 Report Share Posted July 21, 2009 Forget the raw speed of writing to tape vs DVD, the real speed hit comes from having to swap optical media after every 4.7 GB. So depending on the volume of data involved, you have to include the cost/value of the operators time (both for backup/archive _and_ for restore) in your cost benefit analysis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 21, 2009 Report Share Posted July 21, 2009 Forget the raw speed of writing to tape vs. DVD. Unless you have a reliable (automatic) setup for switching media (autoloader), backups will not reliably happen every day because operators will forget to swap media. For small amounts of data, optical backups may be OK for consumer-type backups. For large amounts of data for a small business, with removal offsite and swapping of backup sets, right now tape autoloaders are the only realistic option unless networked backup over a big pipe to off-site storage can be used. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spin_c Posted July 24, 2009 Report Share Posted July 24, 2009 Fair comments everyone, all taken on board. Looks like its time I left Optical Archiving alone and moved on! Would it wise/feasible to archive to Hard Drives? We have 2 sites running with servers only holding 750GB of live work in progress data. We have not in done any serious archiving for some months so have not really run up against server capacity issues as yet so I would say I would need to archive approximately 2TB of data every year. If I was to archive on a regular basis (weekly) to FW800 Drives (2 copies) one for onsite one for Offsite do you think that would be a logical archiving system, Or should I really consider going back to Tapes? I am also backing up offsite every night so that is covered. Its just completed work I want to Archive off the live system. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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