Jump to content

unable to rebuild catalog


Recommended Posts

hello. we have a mac g4 running retrospect 4.3 with a seagate ait tape drive. we have lots of old tapes from over the course of 10 years of production, and we're beginning to restore them all.

 

 

 

however, we're missing the original catalog files for lots of the tapes (most of them actually), so we're trying to rebuild the catalogs. there are three tapes in particular we're trying to focus on right now, and all three have the same problem. they begin the process of rebuilding the catalog, but always get stuck very early in the process (30-50 files in) and just hang there forever.

 

 

 

i'm relatively new to retrospect, so don't even know where to start troubleshooting. any tips are MUCH appreciated.

 

 

 

-adam frick-

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A SCSI hang can be caused by one or more of the following:

 

 

 

1) a dirty tape drive or bad tape. Clean the drive. Try another tape. If other tapes work, then you just have a tape with a spot that's bad enough to hang.

 

 

 

2) another device on your SCSI bus is interfering with the tape drive's communication. Make sure your SCSI ID numbers are set correctly. Turn off your Mac and the SCSI devices. Disconnect all SCSI devices except for the tape drive.

 

 

 

3) you have a bad cable. Replace the SCSI cable that connects the tape drive to the computer after removing other devices and cables from the SCSI chain.

 

 

 

4) you are missing a terminator or have a bad terminator. The last device and ONLY the last device in your SCSI chain needs to be terminated. Try replacing the terminator if you already have one on the chain.

 

 

 

5) the computer may be having a problem. Install Retrospect on another Macintosh and try the tape drive there as the lone SCSI device.

 

 

 

6) the drive may be defective. If you have implemented all of the preceding steps and get failures on multiple tapes after changing cables, terminators and computers, then the drive, being the only factor that has not changed, is the culprit--send it back to your vendor for repairs.

 

 

 

The steps above are the essential outline of our SCSI troubleshooting here at Dantz. Hands on testing of device issues is really still the best method and even getting SCSI logging information is usually only to confirm empirical testing. Note that concluding something is a bad device is the LAST thing we assume after all other components and variables have been ruled out.

 

 

 

"SCSI voodoo", as they call the nebulous symptoms that can plague a SCSI bus, can often lead one to false assumptions of the cause of problems. It's important that once a variable is tested that it be tested more than once for consistency's sake to rule out dumb luck. For example, SCSI voodoo accounts for why a tape drive may work fine for many months without proper termination but then suddenly fail in some way later. Although customers will often cite that nothing has changed with their SCSI bus configuration in months and that it was all working before, this is really a hallmark inconsistency of SCSI voodoo.

 

 

 

The quickest and most conclusive test for most devices is to test it on more than one computer as the only device on the bus and with a different SCSI cable. If the problems can be reproduced on multiple computers, it's more than likely a hardware problem with the device itself.

 

 

 

Of course there a myriad of other specific issues having to do with a device's own hardware settings like with internal jumper cables, dip switches or internal termination that has to be sorted out with the device's manual and/or vendor or manufacturer of the drive but the kernel of SCSI troubleshooting above is a good general guideline.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...