WD Retrospect Express 6.5 backup to new computer

[vineyridge]

My old computer hard drive crashed. I had XP Pro and my new computer also has XP Pro. Retrospect Express 6.5 came with my Western Digital Media Center external HD and I have used the program for backing up. The backup files are on the WD hard drive, but neither I nor the fellow who built the computer have any experience with the restore function. I do not wish to completely replace the C and D drives on the new computer as there have been things downloaded that I will be using. Retrospect express 6.5 has been installed on the new computer, as has the WD Media Center, and both work.

 

The old hard drive is inaccessible, and I think the catalog files may be there instead of on the WD drive.

 

 

 

How can I get access to the data in the backup sets and transfer it to my new computer?

[rhwalker]

See the section of the User's Guide entitled "Moving Retrospect" (see the index). It has all of the details.

 

Russ

[vineyridge]

The Moving Retrospect section doesn't have the answer that I need.

 

I don't have access to config65.dat because it is on the dead drive.

 

Is there a way to recreate it? I do have the .rbc files.

 

When I tried to recreate the catalog file from the instructions in help, I got an error message arc.cpp-174.

[rhwalker]

Yes, you should be able to recreate the catalog, but, unfortunately, you seem to be getting an error when doing that.

 

The config65.dat file isn't a catalog - it's your preferences and settings, license information, etc. You should be able to get past that point by entering your license information, and that will recreate the config65.dat file, but won't give you the catalog file. The catalog file is simply Retrospect's database index into its database (the backup set), and tells Retrospect where to find the files, etc., in the backup set.

 

You are stuck on the catalog recreation problem, not the config65.dat recreation problem.

 

Retrospect Express isn't terribly robust on error recovery, and you've got an old version and might be hitting a bug that has been fixed in later versions.

 

For people using an up-to-date version, the usual approach is to download a trial version of the full Retrospect, use that to rebuild your catalog, and then move on from there, either with the full version or the Express version (catalog and backup set formats are the same).

 

Your problem is that the current trial versions of Retrospect, I believe, have catalog and backup set formats that are incompatible with the older versions. When upgrading, they are converted to the new format, but you can't go back.

 

I think that your best option would be to upgrade to a current version, use that to rebuild your catalogs from scratch.

 

Russ