Backup Drive Meltdown - Please Help

[46169fcb-818d-4755-9cb4-e0f73bd9fec7]

Hi there,

 

I'm having a retrospect-based nightmare.

 

I had 2 backup drives, on which I run a bunch of scripts and rotate the drives each week so that one is always off site.

 

Both drives have recently died, leaving me with no backup. I've purchased replacement drives but can't seem to set them up to function as the old ones did.

 

The catalogue files for the scripts were on the old drives and I can't get retrospect to recreate them. The retrospect manual and online help seems quite hard to fathom, it describes the situation where a catalog file is lost but then doesn't provide clear instructions on how to recreate them.

 

As you can probably tell from my question, I'm new to retrospect and I don't have a detailed understanding of the software.

 

Thanks for any help and solutions you can provide, its really appreciated.

[Lennart_T]

The catalogue files for the scripts were on the old drives and I can't get retrospect to recreate them. The retrospect manual and online help seems quite hard to fathom, it describes the situation where a catalog file is lost but then doesn't provide clear instructions on how to recreate them.

You can only recreate the catalog files if you have the backup itself. But you don't, since they were on the drives that died.

 

I would create new backup sets and use that as the destination in the old scripts, assuming you do have the scripts intact. Otherwise you will have to create the scripts from scratch, too.

[46169fcb-818d-4755-9cb4-e0f73bd9fec7]

Hi,

 

thanks for the reply, its very helpful.

 

Now I know that I need to, I can create the scripts from scratch and restore the backup function.

 

However, I'm having trouble getting retrospect to recognise the new removable hard drive.

 

The drive is an Iomega 2TB, connected using firewire.

I've formatted the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as instructed by the retrospect manual.

I've written the backup file for a new script onto the drive.

When running the script an error box appears saying 'please select a new disk'. In the box a message saying 'no removable media found' appears.

 

I would like to use the drive as a destination for a file backup set. The manual says that you can use removeable disks for both file backup sets and removeable disk backup sets although retrospect seems to be defaulting to the latter.

 

thanks again for your help

[Lennart_T]

I think the term "removable disk" refers to disks that is removable from the drive, such as a magneto-optical drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_drive

 

If you create a "file" backup set, you should be able to use your external (not removable) drive.

I think a file backup set is limited to 1TB, but I'm not sure.

[46169fcb-818d-4755-9cb4-e0f73bd9fec7]

I'm still having trouble getting retrospect to recognise the external drive. Is there anything else I have to do to prepare the drive or to point retrospect to it?

 

when searching for devices, retrospect is only seeing the DVD/RW drive, not the external.

 

The drive appears in finder and on the desktop.

 

Thanks for the help.

[Lennart_T]

When I create a file backup set, this is what I get:

 

Then, when I click "New", I can navigate to any drive on the desktop.

[46169fcb-818d-4755-9cb4-e0f73bd9fec7]

Spot on. That's exactly where I was going wrong - the type of backup set.

 

All is working fine now.

 

Thanks you so much for the advice, its been really helpful.

[Lennart_T]

My pleasure!