Retro 6 To Retro 8

[ignprint]

Hello!

 

I am looking to move forward with Retro 8.2 (399) from Retro 6.1.230 and I have a few questions concerning that process.

 

I am running Retro 6 on two MAC stations backing up partitions on those respective stations as well as on a third station, backing up to two Tandberg / Exabyte autoloaders, to LTO3 tape (400/800GB). We are looking to have one station running Retrospect 8.2 (or 8x), connected to one or two autoloaders.

 

Question 1: Can Retrospect 8 (running from one station) run two autoloaders (LTO3 or LTO4) with two scripts running at the same time?

 

Question 2: How painful is the re-catalog from 6 to 8? Does 8 in fact need both the original catalog and media (tape in autoloader), reading concurrently to create the new 8 catalog as is in the Read Me? Has anyone here recreated catalogs; how long has it taken?

 

Question 3: Can Retrospect change the barcode number of a tape without erasing the data on the tape (to streamline the 2 libraries)?

 

Thank you very much for your time and assistance!

 

Anthony

[Lennart_T]

Answer 1: You can run multiple backups at the same time, but I don't know about autoloaders. In theory, that would be possible,

 

Answer 2: I think you can never add to a backup set started in Retrospect 6, only restore from it. I also think you need to run through all the tapes once to do a recatalog.

 

Answer 3: I haven't got a clue.

[Mayoff]

For question 3, you should never be changing the bar code on a tape. That confuses software.

 

The bar code is tracked inside the catalog file, if you do change the bar code, you probably need to do a full catalog rebuild.

 

For question 1, if you want to write to 2 tape drives at the same time, you need to buy the advanced tape add-on.

[Lennart_T]

The bar code is tracked inside the catalog file, if you do change the bar code, you probably need to do a full catalog rebuild.

Slightly off topic:

We use Retro 7.6 on Windows. Some tapes have bar codes, most doesn't. We're thinking of adding bar codes to all tapes. Will adding a bar code to existing tapes confuse Retrospect? Or should we only add bar codes to erased tapes?

[ignprint]

Thank you very much for your time in answering my questions; I appreciate it.

[ignprint]

Thank you again for all your help.

 

I do have another question; I did not know if it warranted another thread...?

 

What is the xfer (speed) (transfer speed) of Retrospect 8 (8.2.0, 399 build)? Also, how do I find the xfer for my current Retrospect, which is 6.1.230?

 

Again, my thanks!

[twickland]

Data transfer speeds will depend on your hardware setup, network (if you're backing up clients), and actual data being backed up. Your best bet would be to review your logs and reports to see what kind of backup speeds you've been experiencing under 6.1 and then download and test the trial version of 8.2.

 

Retro 6.1 was a polished product after so many years of development. Retro 8.2, based on a completely different architecture, is still very much a work in progress (some would call 8.2 the equivalent of an early beta). In our experience, everything in Retro 8.2 is slower than in 6.1, with the functions that occur through the Console-Engine interface lagging more than the actual backups themselves.

 

If I were you, I would plan on continuing to use Retro 6.1 for restoring your old data. The conversion process is frought with problems and difficulties, and because you can't write to the old backup/media set after conversion anyway, we found the hassle not worth it.