Retrospect 6 fails to work with USB 2.0 tape drive

[niceguy48799]

I have spent the last few days trying to figure out why Retrospect 6.0 keeps on reporting communications errors (e.g. lost access to storage media, communications error, etc.) while executing the compare phase of a backup operation and discovered the following: (my system uses the Intel D845EBG2L motherboard with 6 USB 2.0 ports, Intel Pentium 4/2.26GHz processor, Windows XP Professsional with Microsoft USB 2.0 drivers as part of XP Service Pack 1, 512MB DDR RAM, 80GB hard disk, GF4 Ti4600 graphics card, and a Seagate TapeStor Travan 40 USB 2.0 tape drive being the only USB device connected to the system)

 

 

 

If USB 2.0 support is enabled in the mothernboard, the Seagate TapeStor is shown as connected the USB 2.0 Root Hub and working properly in XP Device Manager. The Seagate TapeStor diagnostic program can read and write data (I tested up to 2GB worth) without errors.

 

 

 

Retrospect 6.0 can seemingly write to the tape drive without any problems but will hang on the compare phase.

 

 

 

If USB 2.0 support is disabled, the tape drive is now shown as connected to the USB 1.0/1.1 hub via Device Manager. The Seagate diagnostics still works fine but much slower.

 

 

 

Retrospect 6.0 can now compare the files without errors and the backup operation completes successfully.

 

 

 

I can cause the above results at will by enabling and disabling USB 2.0 support.

 

 

 

What can I do to get Retrospect to work with the Seagate tape drive in USB 2.0 mode where throughput is significantly faster?

 

 

 

Thanks for your help!

 

 

[niceguy48799]

More information concerning my last post ... it would appear the last file or block of data written to tape is incomplete or corrupted when USB 2.0 (480Mbps bandwidth) is active. It also took what seems like forever for the snapshot file (4KB in this case) to be written to tape to begin the compare phase which never finishes due to communication errors such as error 205. I proved this by restoring the files from this tape and the last file is missing data at the end.

 

 

 

When USB 1.0/1.1 (12Mbps bandwidth) is active, the snapshot file is written in just a few seconds and the compare phase begins and completes without error.

 

 

 

It also doesn't matter whether System Restore is active or ASPI is loaded. The Removable Storage service and Norton Antivirus were disabled in all testing scenarios. I also stopped all non-essential XP services (e.g. Automatic Updates, Portable Media Serial Number, etc.) while troubleshooting but doesn't seem to matter. As long as I disable USB 2.0 then everything works.

 

 

 

I tested this by installing Retrospect 6.0 and the USB 2.0 tape drive on a Windows 98 system that only has USB 1.0/1.1 ports and Retrospect worked fine without any errors.