can't backup

[robirdman]

When I first tried Retrospect, I had recovered stuff from failing hard drives onto the external Maxtor 250G HD. I figured out how to back up folders onto the replacement new internal drives, and then wanted to do the reverse, have the normal data on the internal and back up to the external, so I deleted the backups on the ID (internal drives), copied the ED data to the IDs creating 110G of space there.

 

I then set Retrospect a large folder with subfolders to backup to the ED. I left it as it was taking hours and I thought everything was fine till I later found it had stopped and asked for a new disk after about 49G of the 53G of data. I found that I had set the ED to only leave 46% available of the 110G of free space.

 

I increased this and tried to continue the backup but soon realized that is was starting all over and was putting the backup in a new folder that, with the other partial backup would exceed the capacity of the drive .

 

I wound up deleting all the backups, having it forget all the sets and trying to start over. Now however it immediately asks for a new disk as though the 110G of empty space is unavailable. I kept trying to start over, deleting catalogs, fogetting backups , but I can't get beyond the program immediately asking to start a new disk at PIX-2, instead of the PIX-1 that I want to sent the data to on the ED.

[dld]

I don't know if this would help, but it might be worth trying. I would reformat the Maxtor external drive, uninstall the software for Retrospect Express and the Maxtor. Go into Program Files and remove any entry relating to Retrospect. Then reinstall the Retrospect Express and Maxtor software. Hopefully all entries that are causing you problems would then have been removed. You could even do a Microsoft System Restore. You could then proceed to do a regular backup giving yourself lots of room on the external drive because you know your backup file will increase in size with subsequent progressive backups until you do a recycle backup which gets you back to square one.

[robirdman]

Is this extreme necessary?

I can't wipe clean the external HD, as then all the stuff (maybe 130G) that has been backed up previously, by just copying from different partitions and computers, would no longer exist in more than one place or at all. Then if something went wrong, as it did with the 2 other Maxtor drives in a row, I could lose everything.

After the near simultaneous failure of 2 drives in a row, I am relieved to have COPIED all that data, and coalesced much redundand duplication before I tried the Retrospect software. I don't want to put all that at risk or undo all that work again. I can see these files and open them, unlike with a BACKUP which I'm not as comfortable with yet.

 

And if a whole drive is given as the available spece for a backup and if I later just copy some stuff to that drive will it appear to run out of space again though there is plenty there?

[natew]

Hi

 

did you try deleting the backup set from within Retrospect and then creating a new backup set? This should resolve the issue.

 

Thanks

Nate