Why no Catalog File on internal backup drive?

[klaveness]

I use Retrospect 7.7.620 on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit computer to make separate backups on two drives:

 

1. An internal hard drive, which is installed in addition to the c:\ drive and is not in a RAID array with the c:\ drive. The only thing that goes on this drive is my daily backups; the operating system and all my stuff are on the c:\ drive.

2. An external hard drive, which connects to the computer via USB. This is for weekly backups, and is normally stored offsite. It, too, is used for nothing but Retrospect backups.

 

When backing up to the external drive, Retrospect seems to place a current Catalog File in the Retrospect folder, updating it each time a backup occurs. I haven't yet needed to use this Catalog File to restore my stuff, but assume that I could navigate to it and use it instead of rebuilding a Catalog File from the folder on the external drive.

 

But when backing up to the internal drive, Retrospect does not create a Catalog File in the Retrospect folder. I recently did have to restore from the internal drive, and it took over two days for the Catalog File to rebuild.

 

Two questions:

 

Is there any way I can personally tweak Retrospect to do the same thing on the internal drive that it does on the external one: create a Catalog File and update it with each backup?

 

If not, could our friends at Retrospect take steps to add this feature to a forthcoming update? This would allow a restore without a lengthy rebuild of the Catalog File.

 

Thanks.

[bobbodavis]

There should always be a catalog file. If both backups point to the same backup set, they will also use the same catalog file. Try searching your entire system for ".rbc" files and make sure you search in hidden and system folders as well - perhaps it got created elsehwere, although I don't know why that would be. Retrospect depends on the catalog files to determine what has been backed up and what has changed between the next backups

[klaveness]

It's easy to find the catalog file for the backup on the second internal drive, except when the c:\ drive crashes. It dies along with the c:\ drive, because that's where Retrospect puts it.

 

Here's the path:

 

c:\Users\[my user name]\Documents\Retrospect Catalog files\[backup set name].rbc

 

This is especially baffling, since the catalog file for the external backup is usefully placed on the external drive, not the c:\ drive.

[bobbodavis]

Yeah, if the catalog file is on the drive that died, then you're out of luck.

 

Are you backing up the drive to itself? I'm assuming not!

 

Wherever you primary data is being stored, make sure that you're backing it with Retrospect somewhere else. Also do the same with the catalog file so you have a safe copy of it too. You can create a new backup set on you external drive and have retrospect copy the catalog file from the internal drive there on a periodic basis to prevent this from happening in the future. Or, you can also use a a free tool that's incorporated with Windows called "robocopy"l. Basically create a short batch script that uses robocoy to make a duplicate of the catalog file from one location to another (that is not on the original disk). You can even "automate" the robocopy task it by setting it as a scheduled task in Windows.