Storage Slot Amnesia

[maisany]

I'm running 6.5.319 on a Win 2003 server with a Dell PV 122T LTO autoloader attached. So far, it has been working relatively well. I've only had one "hang" where for some reason, I think it tried to call on the cleaning cartridge for a scheduled cleaning and didn't like the cleaning tape. I had to shut off the LTO device and eject and re-insert the cleaning cartridge to clear the error condition but it seems to be running back ups just fine so far.

 

I'm new to Retrospect and I'm learning as I go along. I've started out with manual backups and now I've created my first set of alternating scheduled backups.

 

Here's my issue with the autoloader and how it appears in the devices window in Retrospect:

 

First of all, when I do any sort of manual tape management on the drive -- such as changing tapes -- the library slots tree disappears and can't be restored for anything without closing Retrospect and restarting it. Not a big deal but still an annoyance.

 

The other thing that I've noticed that I think is a bigger problem is the tape/slot recognition function. I didn't get the barcode reader option on the autoloader because we're really not that big or sophisticated. We're backing up a total of 3 servers and maybe 25-30 clients total, and only the servers are going on the tapes (we're backing the clients up to a NAS device). For some unknown reason -- and this is even after restarting Retrospect, re-scanning the hardware environment and re-scanning the tapes in the library one by one -- the tapes are not recognized correctly. For example, right now my library tree shows two slots with the same tape names. I also show a slot where I know a named member of a backup set is inserted, but next to the slot, the name of the tape is not displayed at all. When I click on it and choose "Properties", it still shows me nothing.

 

I'm assuming that Retrospect is properly identifiying these tapes -- or at least the named members -- but its sort of a pain when I have to pull the correct tape to replace with a fresh one.

 

Any thoughts on why this might be happening? Anyone else had similar experiences?

[natew]

Hi

 

Try the update to Retrospect 6.5.336 and the newest Retrospect driver update. These problems may have been fixed there.

 

http://www.dantz.com/en/support/updates.dtml

 

Thanks

Nate