mlposner Posted February 4, 2005 Report Share Posted February 4, 2005 Since purchasing Retro Desktop 6 in July 04 I have not succeeded in completing even one backup. I just use Immediate/Duplicate mode (no need for scripts) on a single Mac dual 1.25 G4 MDD with 2 GB RAM and many peripherals (too much to list here now but I realize it may matter) I tried to first clone and backup and hopefully later to just replace changed files. What has happened is that everything starts fine -the source disk is scanned and files and folders are counted and the copying begins. The progress bar appears and the files copied starts counting. The initial backup should be transferring about 75-80 GB to the target drive (all ATA or external FW drives). What happens is that between 2 GB and 10 GB are copied and then everyhting just stops. At first I let it go thinking lots of files were being processed in the CPU as there were no drive activity lights flashing. After a few hours I realized everything was locked. On some occasions either OS X was totally frozen - nothing worked. Menues don't drop, the dock doesn't work, even force quit is dead, by menu or keyboard. I restart and find there are some files copied, but not much. Other times Retrospect freezes but I have access to the Finder and can force quit and restart it or other apps. But in every instance I have never been able to copy and clone one volume to another to completion. Never! To copy I can use my Retrospect 5.1 booted into OS 9 (not classic) and it usually works - but it refuses to make CD or DVD backups because it can't see any of my burners - all of which are supported, but all I see is a list of SCSI devices (when all the burners are ATAPI/EIDE, etc.). Copying files and folders in OS 9 of course also reeks havoc with long file names created in OS X - and I can't boot from the backup if I need to, unless it's OS 9's System folder. To be fair, I have also tried cloning and volume backup with LaCie's SilverKeeper 1.1.2, Carbon Copy Cloner 2.3 and De Javu. All of them never complete and freeze at some point just like Retrospect 6. If I attempt to just clone the system and a few files (maybe a few GB) it will go to completion. But 80 GB will not! Fastest of all is defunct Connectix CopyAgent for OS 9 and below which will backup everything on a first try (2 main drives and five initial backups) - over 250 GB - all at once if I leave it for 24 hours - but long file names are toast!. Been using Retrospect since 4.3 and have always had problems burning CD's - but nothing like what I'm experiencing now. Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated. Marty P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbeek Posted February 4, 2005 Report Share Posted February 4, 2005 Have you verified that the Hard Drives are OK? It sounds like one of the HDs has directory errors - especially since CCC died. I would bet that you have cross-linked files on the source HD. Good Luck, Justin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlposner Posted February 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2005 Hi Justin, The hard drives are fine unless they have little green evil demons in them that bribe Disk Warrior and TechTool Pro (both current versions) to fool me. The drives undergo weekly bouts with TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior to check hardware and files and directories. Permissions are repaired religiously when I have a hint of anything going wrong. System files have been reinstalled and updated numerous times. And I've torn out most of my hair! I've heard the term "cross-linked files" but aren't exactly sure how they can interfere with the HD's (beyond understanding what cross linking means). But I believe Disk Warrior is supposed to fix that sort of stuff. And CCC is only one of four apps that die trying to backup and give me a useable clone. It'll clone the system and minimal files - just not 80 GB's. They all seem to run out of breath at about 10 GB into the BU. Regards, MartyP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzytnth3 Posted April 8, 2005 Report Share Posted April 8, 2005 I have similar problems, and haven't managed a successful backup since January 2005 (I've wasted 12 DVD disks in the process I might add . I've had to resort to buying Intego Personal Backup to have some kind of backup in place (it works fine just doesn't backup across more than one DVD which is a pain). Since the upgrade to OSX 10.3.8 I have been having lots of weird behaviour not just with Retrospect but all my apps including the Finder. I tried Disk Utility Repair permissions and Disk Warrior numerous times but no real improvement. On another list a techie guru guy suggested downloading the combo 10.3.8 update from the Apple downloads (its about 140mb) and ran that, things are now back to normal no weirdness except for Retrospect which still continues to crash when it starts writing or sometimes it will write about 4 gigs and then crash. I think I will try removing and reinstalling Retrospect deleting any prefs reconfigure the drive and see if that helps. My other solution is that I've picked up a PC and I'm going to install Linux on it and see if I can script a backup routine for it and my Mac, fun fun fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted April 8, 2005 Report Share Posted April 8, 2005 Quote: To be fair, I have also tried cloning and volume backup with LaCie's SilverKeeper 1.1.2, Carbon Copy Cloner 2.3 and De Javu. All of them never complete and freeze at some point just like Retrospect 6. Being really fair would be to acknowledge that you are not having a Retrospect problem at all. What sort of RAM do you have in the G4? Is it 2 Gigs of Apple provided RAM? Or is it some less expen$ive third party cards? Reader reports on sites such as Macintouch continue to confirm that even marginally flaky RAM can cause problems from crashing programs to corrupted files. Given the symptoms reported by both MartyP and Graeme Mair above, that would be the first place I'd suggest looking. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ringg Posted April 8, 2005 Report Share Posted April 8, 2005 I agree with CallMeDave, that flaky memory can do all sorts of wierd things. However, the scanning phase of Retrospect is the memory intensive phase. These freezes occur during the writing phase. That makes me think that it is some kind of communication problem. Perhaps a buffer underrun?? With all of those unnamed peripherals online sharing the CPU's attention, perhaps the CPU can't fill the buffer as fast as the drive is burning the DVD's. In the old days when all Mac peripherals were SCSI's the first suggested remedy to a peripheral problem was to disconnect all other peripherals. I would try that first. One of your multiple peripherals might be tying up the CPU. Good luck - let us know what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlposner Posted April 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 9, 2005 Regarding my RAM - all 2 GB was purchased with the Mac Dual G4 MDD from MacWhse/CDW, One DIMM was found to be bad by Apple's Hardware check disk and was replaced immediately. I have removed all peripherals and cards twice to recheck RAM with Apples hardware disk. No problems noted. I have never known a time, on present or former Mac's, that Retrospect worked as described - from v4.3 through 5.1 and now 6. I could backup to other volumes in the past (and can now under OS 9 (not Classic). But all my burners previously were not recognized (but all on Dantz list as okay). Only SCSI drives showed on the scan and most of them were really ATA. But SCSI burners, oddly, didn't, or the ATA burners, including the built in OEM burners. So getting even one set of my data burned to disk has been impossible. And manual backups with Toast to CD's a few years back now leave me with disks that mount as "Packet media" and contain zero items!! Yet they are full. Even Toast 6 doesn't know what they are. It's just too much over the years. It's insane. With Retrospect out, I tried just using Apple's finder copy - it won't copy just newer files, but erases the entire destination folder first and replaces it (even Windows has other options). Yet, when it comes to an alias that's in one of the nested folders it's copying, it stops copying saying "perhaps because the destination does not support this type of alias." At first, after clicking OK, I assumed the other files were copied. False hope! When I opened the destination folder, which was almost exactly the same as the source when I started, minus a file or two, but what I found was disturbing. After the 'alias" it didn't want to copy, it just stopped, but only 16 folders copied (those before it hit the alias) and the remaining 34 folders were gone - deleted! Had I not looked and needed to replace the source folder with the destination backup, I'd be "poop" out of luck. This is out and out poor design in a flagship product. Every file needed to be copied period with possibly a list of files not copied, with their paths, at the end (and with an option to click (copy these files anyway!). After Using Connectix' CopyAgent since it's release I expected to replace only charged files (in OS 9 it can scan large folders or volumes in a very short time and then report it copied 3 out of 532,456 items). This to me is elegant. It could synchronize two folders (so both were identical) when I had a doubt about some files in the source. Then I could weed out the duplicates and often recover a file lost on the source but still present on the destination backup. Seems complicated, but it wasn't. Losing copyAgent and it's logical approach to copying and backing up has raised my stress level 100 fold or more. I never approach backups like before, as routine. Now they are a battle and waste hours of time I need elsewhere and then often just don't work. Nowadays, almost anything I do is stopped by some dialog saying I don't have permission to do this or that - the trash won't empty - drag and drop doesn't work - the list is endless. I use DiskWarrior weekly to check directories, use Disk utilities to repair permissions - use Cocktail weekly - have tried Onyx. I'm doing all the maintenance (100 times more than I ever needed to do) and still can't make OSX get even close to the stability and "quirklessness" of OS 9 (and 9.1 was a lot better than 9.2.2) for me anyway - but I can't run 9.1 any longer. I stay in OS 9 because I have expensive film scanners that don't work in OSX (no longer supported). The list could go one and this isn't the place. But I'll bet a lot of this is familiar to others in this forum. In many respects OS X (was or is) not ready for prime time in many of the arenas it plays in. Unstable (when the hype is just the opposite) and overly complex (I guess to accomodate the security issues and UNIX underpinning) and more in need of constant maintenance than old World War II bombers at air shows. So if anyone has any clue as to how to make Retrospect 6.0.204 act even a little like CopyAgent, I'd been grateful to hear you out - I'm sure others are lurking, and hoping, as well, to get some insight into what was once a routine chore. Thanks all for listening - you can tell this is starting to get to me. I need to get out in the sun more and checking important stuff more ofte than fixing permissions and reinstalling systems endlessly. Sorry for the rant. MartyP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ringg Posted April 13, 2005 Report Share Posted April 13, 2005 Marty, get a grip! You removed all peripherals to test the RAM. That's good. So now you have to isolate your problem. Any one of your peripherals or cables could be causing your problem. Replace your peripherals one at a time and run Retrospect after each addition to see if it runs without freezing. For instance, connect one hard drive and try to backup your data using Retrospect. If it works, then connect another peripheral, and run Retrospect again. Repeat the process until you connect a peripheral that causes your system to freeze with Retrospect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted April 13, 2005 Report Share Posted April 13, 2005 Quote: Regarding my RAM - all 2 GB was purchased with the Mac Dual G4 MDD from MacWhse/CDW, One DIMM was found to be bad by Apple's Hardware check disk and was replaced immediately. I have removed all peripherals and cards twice to recheck RAM with Apples hardware disk. No problems noted. It's entirely possible that CDW provided all the RAM themselves, instead of including any Apple provided memory cards. And it's entirely possible that the memory they provided is causing the problem (a DOA RAM card isn't a good sign). It's certain, however, that passing the Apple hardware memory test is not an assurance of first-quality RAM. It's mathematically "challenging" to test gigabytes of memory (not that it's hard to do, it would just take a few years to do it). And since OS X is more demanding of memory then OS 9 ever was, it makes sense that bad RAM could cause a problem in one OS and not the other. And as your original post made clear, the fact that you're experiencing freezes in a wide variety of programs pretty much proves that this is not a Retrospect issue. With all the issues you report here it's obvious that something is terribly wrong with _your_ install. This is not how OS X behaves for the majority of users. The sort of "maintenance" you're running is simply unnecessary at the level you're doing it. If you had a system that worked fine but exhibited problems with Retrospect, you might be able to get some guidance here. But something at a much lower level is wrong with your computer. Retrospect's behavior on that computer is just a symptom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlposner Posted April 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2005 To ringg and CallMeDave, You guys are hard task masters, though what you've said has already run through some gray matter below the receeding hairline. Only thing that's kept me from doing the "remove and test" scenario is the huge amounts of time needed. First I need to be sure I have all data backed up (I'll do that in OS 9 with CopyAgent - just copying my User file which contains all docs - apps are already on DVD or are replaceable and OS X system files are not in there). Then I'll pull all the externals off line, from drives, burners to scanners, floppy and Zip readers, card readers, modems and sound system stuff. With two drives internal (and 2 burners internal), I'll initialize the target and see if I can get a working clone copied to it. If it doesn't work I'll pull the internal burners and SCSI, ATA and Serial cards (and anything else lurking inside). Problem is Retrospect has to run from the source volume, which presents a problem. I don't know if the CD I have is current enough to run under 10.3.8 (it was first 6.0 version). All this detail makes me insane. Maybe I'll create an eDrive with TTPro on the target drive - hopefully the 4 GB partition won't effect anything and it will leave the other two volumes free to do their thing. Currently the eDrive is on one of my FireWire drives. Then, the wait time - after initalizing the target volume (which I'll later use as the permanent boot volume - because it's Apple's OEM IBM unit) there is the time to scan 80 GB and then write and compare. Then all that (if it works??) gets trashed, the target reinitalized (cloned systems must start with a new clean partitiion, I'm told) and stuff gets plugged in (whether one at a time or like Conflict Catcher would do, 1/2, revaluate, then other half, etc. This is a not a good week of because I have too much unfinished stufff on the machine, taxes included. But whatever I do it will be the last thing I plug in that creates the problem. That's my luck. In the interim I'm also going to use my AppleCare policy before it runs out and describe the situation to one of their fair haired guys and find out if there is a better way to check RAM (I used their Hdre Util and also TTPro 4.0.3 - which has many fewer routines than v3 had (maybe I should check RAM on my OS 9.2.2 partition and use the 10 day long routines.). Maybe even lug the while thing to a local AppleStore and let one of their 'geniuses" run their own diagnostics on the power supply, RAM and logic board to see if they can find some hidden anomally. Anyway, this won't all start until taxes are sent, a bunch of letters written and spreadsheets finished - e-mail sent, etc. I won't have much computer left to use while playing Mr. Fixit. Thanks folks - if you think of anything else, I'll gratefully listen. And will report back when I get all the testing and copying done. Anything I learn, I'll pass along unless I just pass out! Ciao all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted April 14, 2005 Report Share Posted April 14, 2005 Quote: I'll initialize the target and see if I can get a working clone copied to it. I'd suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner for your test. If it fails, you can stop worrying that you're experiencing any sort of Retorspect software problem. Put an OS X system on an external drive volume (I don't know what an "eDrive" is) along with CCC. Boot from that drive, and Clone from your Source to your Destination. CCC is faster then REtrospect, since it doesn't do any sort of compare pass. But since your reports of "doesn't work" have described hard freezes, this would be a reasonable test to try. If _I_ were experiencing this sort of behavior in an OS X system, I'd start with a fresh drive, install OS X from the CD's, and then simply re-configure everything a bit at a time. Yeah, it's a pain, but if you're careful and avoid haxies and other unstable stuff, you will either end up with a stable system or you'll know for sure that it's hardware related. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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