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Problem with the custom configuration in Windows 7


Warspite

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I just bought a new computer running Windows 7 home edition and I'm having a problem doing the custom configuration for my DVD drive. The drive is a SATA HP DVD A DH16AAL and when I click on the "configure button" it does nothing. There is no window popping-up to ask what sort of media I want to use with my drive. Is there a workarond for this? I don't want to buy a new DVD drive since the one I have is brand new.

 

I also have the latest updates from Retrospect.

 

I hope someone can help me out. I also would not want to return the software and ask for a refund because right now it is unusable.

 

Thanks!

Edited by Guest
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I am having a very similar problem.

 

New Windows 7 Professional system with Retrospect 7.7 Pro with latest updates (7.7.208).

 

When I go to devices then Environment, I choose one of my 3 DVD-R drive and click the Configure Optical Drive Icon. A window appears with 3 buttons (Configure, Delete and Cancel). When I click Configure, absolutely nothing happens. No error message, no event log, nothing in retrospect own log.

 

My BIOS was initially set to SATA configured as IDE. I have since changed this to SATA as AHCI and loaded Windows 7 ahci drivers. All drives now work as AHCI within Windows but same problem in Retrospect.

 

2 of my drives are SATA. --- HL-DT-ST GH22NS50

 

Suspecting SATA was the issue, I have also connected an older drive on IDE. Same issue.

--- HL-DT-ST GWA-4083B

 

Hope this helps determine what may be causing the issue. I you need any help testing or need more details, please advise.

 

Thanks

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Thanks for your reply but I honestly don't belive this is where the issue is. Retrospect has a custom configure function just for that reason.

 

Also, the actual process of custom configuring does not take place at all. After clicking Configure, the window immediately close and I'm back to device environment window without an error !

 

I don't believe any drive would custom configure at this point.

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That's exactly what it does on my system also. I wanted to test the DVD drive that was running my Retrospect 7.0 on my old PC but it is ATAPI and I can't connect it to the new computer. That drive was a HP DVD1040 and I didn't have any problems configuring it with Retrospect. On a side note, I tried uninstalling the software and use the software before it was updated to the 208 version and it didn't work either.

 

The problem is extremely annoying because I work in the printing industry and I use my backups on a daily basis. A client will need some business cards that are in one of my archives but I can't access them because the software won't configure my DVD drive. I see my catalogues and old scripts without a problem though.

 

I hope someone has a fix or information concerning that problem.

 

 

Edited by Guest
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Though both of you are willing it to work the fact is if it doesn't work with custom configuration it most likely will not work... ever ;)

 

It's because EMC does not support the drives in question. So they are kind of saying if it's not in the supported devices database and you can't get it to work with the custom configurator you're out of luck.

 

If you need an optical drive that works, you better get one from the supported devices list...

 

The above mentioned doesn't mean I agree with EMC's apparent policy regarding the support of the devices in question. It's rather my interpretation of similar posts on this forum regarding more or less the same subject.

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Is there a device that I can buy that would make my old internal DVD drive into an external drive that I could plug using the USB ports on my computer?

 

The list of supported drive in SATA DVD DL is down to only one model (Pioneer DVR-215D)and it dosen't seem to be a model that is sold at my usual computer shops.

 

I normally use DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD DL for my backups and the old HP DVD1040 was able to use all that in Retrospect 7.0 If nothing works I think I'll have to ask for a refund and do my backups with another software from now on.

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Is there a device that I can buy that would make my old internal DVD drive into an external drive that I could plug using the USB ports on my computer?
Yup, these are called "external USB DVD enclosures". You will either need a SATA or PATA version, depending on the drive's bus.

 

I'm not sure if Retrospect will work correct with such a device though. Maybe somebody else has the answer to that.

 

Btw... Storage on optical media like CD-R and DVD-R is convenient and relatively cheap. But, the downside is real life media life. It is quite possible you will get read errors after a couple of years of storage. Tape and even HDD have a FAR longer archive life span.

 

Edited by Guest
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Thanks for your reply but I honestly don't belive this is where the issue is. Retrospect has a custom configure function just for that reason.

 

Also, the actual process of custom configuring does not take place at all. After clicking Configure, the window immediately close and I'm back to device environment window without an error !

 

I don't believe any drive would custom configure at this point.

Respectfully, you are wrong.

 

The problem is that Retrospect doesn't use the same set of commands that most CD / DVD burning programs use. This is done so that Retrospect can leave the media "unclosed" and can append to it. A discussion is in these Knowledge Base articles (search on packet writing):

 

CD and DVD drive Compatibility with Retrospect

Why does it take so long for EMC Insignia to support some Optical drives?

How does Retrospect decide the recording speed when using my CD/DVD drive?

What is the difference between CD-RW and High Speed CD-RW Media? What should I get?

 

Manual Configuration / Custom Configuration sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. It all depends on whether your drive supports the commands that Retrospect needs. If it works, then you are lucky. If it doesn't work, then you need to buy a supported drive.

 

Russ

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Thanks for the response Russ. I do understand all this and have custom configured drives before. Some have failed, other have worked.

 

My concern is more that when I click "Configure", nothing happens... where with all drives I have configured before, I was asked to put in a disc at minimum...

 

My concern is that I am not even getting an error message stating that configuration failed...

 

I have a feeling there's an issue with that Configure button and really not much is happening when I click it... Feeling it could be a Windows 7 sort of problem if you know what I mean..

 

I will hookup a Pioneer DVR-107D to this machine and see if the configure button does anything.

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In that case we/you can only hope Robin Mayoff will spot this thread and deem it to be a bug.

 

That custom config thing is a bit a grey area in their support. It might be broken, but EMC needs to be (made) aware of that first. did anybody try their official support already?

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On my side, I did some more testing,

 

Tried 2 more unsupported DVDs and the configure button does absolutely nothing.

 

I tried 1 more unsupported DVD on an XP machine with 7.7.208 and same issue as on Windows 7. Configure button does nothing.

 

Tried a supported drive on Win 7. Works as expected.

 

There's really something going on with the configure button on 7.7.208.

 

Anybody else has this with drives that they used to be able to use with a custom config on an earlier version of retrospect ???

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Same problem. Windows 7 home premium, 64-bit, Retro 7.7 brand new today. The drive in question is an HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GH50N, FWIW.

 

What Ramon88 doesn't seem to get is that Retro is not bothering to test the drive.

 

As an aside, it's hard to understand Retro's decision to stick with packet writing. If they weren't doing packet writing we would not be having this discussion, and their customers wouldn't have to keep being frustrated by the fact that they're five years behind on drive testing and that half of the drives out there don't work with the program. It's bad business.

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Yes Retrospect uses packet writing, but the configuration tool will also create a track at once driver as needed if it can.

 

Robin,

 

So you did notice this thread! That's good news with respect to this problem, I hope.

 

Regarding track at once, I'm happy to hear that. Doesn't that mean, though, that virtually all drives should support Retrospect? Or are there lots of drives that are not only deficient on packet writing but also on TAO?

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You are not alone with the optical drive configuration problem. After attempting to configure my Phillips drive on my Win 7 Prof 32 bit PC, the request is completly ignored - not a good thing. Looks like I will have to continue using Winzip 14 to do backups to my DVD when needed.

 

Hope Retrospect addresses this soon - with no warning or even error messsage, it can leave one very confused. I just hope my device is supported once this is fixed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have found a work-around in order to use Retrospect 7.7 since I still can't use the custom configuration option. I took the old RDI file created on my old Windows XP machine and I copied it to my new Windows 7 station. I then removed my optical drive from the XP machine and used a USB enclosure which was hooked to the new Win 7 machine. Retrospect was able to associate the RDI file with my old optical drive and I can now do and restore backups.

 

But since nothing is ever easy I have discovered another bug when trying to restore files from a DVD-R media. I will start another topic on this subject in order to keep this thread on topic.

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