LaCie Firewire CD-RW

[rkb]

Yesterday I joined the chorus of irate owners of brand-new FireWire CD-RW drives that get "Error -100 device rejected command" when they try to use Retrospect. Mine is a LaCie 32x10x40 U&I drive, which I am trying to use under MacOS 9.1 with Retrospect 5.0.2.

 

 

 

I understand that this drive is not supported now. I will therefore have to do backups some other way for the time being, probably StuffIt & Toast. I would like to get on a list to be notified when Retrospect DOES get updated to support my drive, or when they make a decision not to support it. It is most infuriating to be left in limbo, not knowing if it will be weeks, months, or years.

 

 

 

Yeah, I SHOULD have checked the compatibility list on the Dantz website. Fact is, I DID, and thought I recognized the LaCie drive I was buying. I made a recognition mistake, easy to do when you are ordering gear from a mail-order house. It came as a surprise to me that a piece of commercial software would be so sensitive to details of a peripheral device. Isn't that what we have operating systems for?

 

 

 

So here I wait. While I wait, I am going to watch like a hawk for other backup solutions that offer schedulability and the ability to span disks. The minute I find one, I'll fire Retrospect permanently. To earn me back as a customer, Dantz has to (1) solve my problem in a reasonable time; and (2) until then, give me some notion of when, or if, a solution will be available.

[Guest]

This drive is not yet supported for use with Retrospect.

 

 

 

Dantz goes through a rigorous qualification process with every drive we test. This means that not every drive will be qualified and we can never guarantee that a particular device will be supported. Some drives do not get qualified ever, and some take 6 months to a year to get support. We have no way of telling if this drive will be supported or not at this moment. That's why checking the compatibility list before you purchase is so strongly recommended.

 

 

 

We add device support often though, so do check back with our Hardware Compatibility list.

[lsteinb]

I understand that it takes time to qualify a drive and that Dantz does not want to promise when tests will be done, but is there any way to find out if a drive is "in the pipeline" and will eventually get tested, rather than sitting in limbo forever? Or is there some general policy like "Dantz plans to test every drive from every major manufacturer (but this is not a promise so don't take us to court iover this)."

[thraxisp]

The original poster's question was simple, but you seem to cut and paste the same answer over and over. I thought that the question was "Can I be notified by email when my device is supported?". It is really a simple yes/no answer.

 

 

 

The follow up question is "Does Dantz have a plan on which devices they will support in future?". If the answer is no, I really should look for a better option....

[dsw1965]

Seems that I've got a very similar situation to the above poster. Recently bought a QPS QueFire 32x drive, and found that it's also not supported (though it seems all other QPS drives are). Bummed!

 

I would also be very interested in getting on a "notification list" to be contacted as soon as my drive is supported.

 

Please advise.

[jjakucyk]

Don't be fooled by the supported list. My Que! Fire 12x10x32 CDRW is listed as compatible, but once I bought Retrospect I found that it was only supported at about 20% of its possible burn speed. Hence, a CDRW takes over 30 minutes to burn, when it should only take about 7 or 8.

[dsw1965]

OUCH! Are you serious???

 

The main reason I bought the new drive is because I tried backing up with my old CDR and it was taking almost an hour to burn a single CD (which would have taken over 12 hours to back up my data).

 

Using Toast, this new drive burns a complete CD in under 5 minutes.

 

I will be truly disgusted if Retrospect's "supported" drives are only functioning at a fraction of their possible speeds!!!

[jjakucyk]

This is by no means a problem with all drives. However, the list of drives that have this problem is not complete, so one has no way of knowing for certain if their drive will have a problem unless it is one of the few specific models listed.

[Guest]

Here's a bit of explanation from the other thread that explains why the performance for a few drives is slower with Retrospect than with other programs:

 

 

 

Retrospect writes using packet-writing. Unfortunately these performance issues are directly related to how the hardware (firmware) works with the Packet Writing standards implemented by Retrospect. These issues need to be resolved within the firmware of the device, so that they allow for higher transfer speeds using the packet writing mode used by Retrospect.

 

 

 

'Burning' software uses the drive in an 'at once' mode: track at once, session at once, or disc at once. Data is cached until it is ready to be written, then it is written all at once.

 

 

 

Retrospect uses the drive in packet writing mode. Why don't we use 'at once' mode? Because if the 'at once' operation doesn't complete, the disc is a coaster. Suppose that last week you'd successfully backed up and verified some critical data, and then today attempt another operation which fails. If last week's successful backup was now gone, you'd be, er, unhappy.

 

 

 

Packet writing and 'at once' mode use quite different parts of the drive's built-in software, and that firmware is responsible for a great deal of how well the drive works. There are even firmware differences depending on write speed, so if you put in low speed media and test, and then high speed media and test, you may have a different experience each time.

 

 

 

As I said, we're working to find ways to address this in Retrospect directly

[thraxisp]

Irene,

 

Is there anything that experienced users might be able to do to help advance your testing. I, personally, would be willing to do some testing and spend some money on coasters if it would help.

[Guest]

Thanks for the offer! Unfortunatly these performance issues are directly related to how the hardware (firmware) works with the Packet Writing standards implemented by Retrospect. These issues need to be resolved within the firmware of the device, so that they allow for higher transfer speeds using the packet writing mode used by Retrospect. In these situtations we had a choice, data integrety or performance. We chose data integrety, because without that you don't have a backup worth writing home about.

 

 

 

We are working with drive vendors, and hopefully there will be a solution for faster packet-writing in the future of these drives.

[Boxit]

Which drive exactly is not supported here. Mine is an external LaCie 32x12x40 and the Device Status says it is a MITSUMI CR-48XATE. It does not appear on the latest Devices Incompatibility List I just consulted.

 

 

 

My MacOS is 10.1.5 and the Retrospect 5.0 driver is 2.7

 

 

 

However I allways get a "No backup devices found" message in my "Storage Devices Window" and of course any attemp to run a script fails for that reason.

 

 

 

Trying the USB connection instead of FireWire connection brings the same "No backup devices found" message however, curiously the Device Status presents the device as a SCSI device ???

[Guest]

Your drive, the Lacie 32x drive with the CR-48XATE mechanism, is not yet supported by Retrospect. The unsupported list only has drives that we know not to work under OS X. Retrospect will only be able to write to drives listed as supported in the compatibility guide.

[Boxit]

Thanks'

[holdeng]

Just to join the chorus -- pleading that the Mitsumi CR-48XATE in La Cie 32x12x40 CDRW FW and USB 2.0 box be supported ASAP and that an email notification be issued.

 

 

 

I like Dantz product, but this is a very troublesome situation -- my other drive blew up, ordered new one RUSH, then it doesn't end up as supported.

 

 

 

Very best regards

 

Gordon

[fuzzy]

I to have been caught out with this drive. But I did notice that Lacie have a free backup app called Silverkeeper that you can download from their website. I haven't tried it yet (but I'm just going to) so can't say how good, bad or indifferent it is but I'm hoping it will plug the gap until Dantz have updated their software.

[jestes]

Ok, how about a simpler question. I have a QPS CD/RW 24x10x40 (not supported of course).

 

Looking through the hardware compatibility list I don't see any dates, I do see that the complete

 

list was updated 4 months ago. Other than the Apple superdrive does anyone know what the

 

last CD/RW drive added was? Anything made in the last 2 years?

 

 

 

Jim

 

 

[Guest]

We do add new devices often. Please check back.

 

 

 

Thanks.

[rkb]

I just 'checked back', two months later, and I see that no new LaCie CD-RW drives have been added to the compatibility list. I repeat my request that an email list be created so that people can be notified when their drive is either qualified or determined to be unsupportable. Limbo is unacceptable, and requiring customers to "check back often" is a burdensome hassle.

 

 

 

I no longer use Retrospect, because I can't. I use StuffIt and Toast, and I don't use it nearly often enough because it's cumbersome. I am actively in the market for a backup package that works with my hardware, and will buy it the instant I find it. Dantz has lost me as a customer because of its unresponsiveness.

 

 

[rkb]

I tried SilverKeeper, but found that its functionality was very minimal. There's no scheduling and no data compression. Because of this, I determined that it was not as good an alternative as StuffIt & Toast.

[cbe]

I agree with the general discouragement about how many devices seem to be in limbo. Can't you at least have a list of devices in limbo in addition to those that are supported and those that will never be supported. My device status shows I have a LaCie CDBP-121032A device which of course doesn't come up in any of your lists.

 

 

 

Or how about this? Why not provide an option in Retrospect to do "disk at once" backups. Certainly being able to do some kind of back up is preferrable to not being able to do any back up (or using StuffIt and Toast. speaking of which, anyone know why Stuffit can segment multi-gigabyte archives into CD sized files? I keeping getting archive sizes that are negative)

 

 

 

-chris.

[labman]

I have a QueFire 12x-10x-32x CD-RW drive that worked fine w/Retrospect Express 5 under OS 10.1.5, however now that I've updated to OS 10.2, I'm getting the same device error (error 100) when I try to run an easyscript. I even trashed and recreated the script and backup set info, but no luck. I also noticed that the console logged a crash during launch of Retrospect even though the program actually launches successfully. I don't know much about the meaning of the logged error, but here it is:

 

 

 

Command: RetroRun

 

PID: 688

 

 

 

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)

 

Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x001e8e38

 

 

 

I've added the recent "Retrospect 5.0 Driver Update", but no difference.