When Retrospect Requires A New Member (Drive) How Do You Recycle A Previous Disk

[b561d6a5-f1d9-45d2-b355-3458b1fdcc35]

Hi There,

 

We have a disk-based backup that contains 3 removable hard drives. Every 6 months the drives become full and we recycle the media by doing a recycled backup which normally requiring Drives 1 & 2 in one go - but because this is a recycled backup, Retrospect recycles both drives no problem.

 

The question we have comes 4 months later when the second Drive is full and Retrospect requires the use of the third Drive in the set.

 

Retrospect displays the flashing tape icon, so we eject Drive 2, insert Drive 3 and nothing happens. We then click the "Choose Media" button and select Drive 3 but because this is now a normal backup (the recycle backup occurred months prior) Retrospect won't use it because it already belongs to a backup set.

 

Is there a way to override this and force Retrospect to use the 3rd Drive and continue with the backup (I'm sure you used to be able to do this - but maybe not)?

 

Any help or suggestions welcome.

 

Cheers

 

Ben

[Lennart_T]

Are you REALLY sure the drive doesn't contain any useful backup? Then erase (format) the drive in Apple's Disk Utility should take care of your problem.

[b561d6a5-f1d9-45d2-b355-3458b1fdcc35]

Thanks for that,

 

Erasing the disk is what we've been doing but for some reason Retrospect crashes when Disk Utility has finished erasing - but maybe that's because Retrospect's "Choose Media" window has been open both times.

 

Anyway, just wanted to see if there was a way to handle it from within Retrospect.

 

Cheers

 

Ben

[twickland]

Anyway, just wanted to see if there was a way to handle it from within Retrospect.

Whenever you recycle a media set, all members should become available for reuse. You need to have the option selected to automatically reuse named media, which is in Preferences> Media. (This option is active by default.)

 

Some users have reported a bug that sometimes causes Retrospect to get confused about what media set a disk or tape is a member of. This may be related to a bug that can cause nested members of a disk media set. To check for this second bug, go to the last disk volume in use and look at the folder structure. It should be Retrospect / [Your media set] / . This inner folder should contain only a series of .rdb files and no more folders.

 

After a recycle backup, you may want to go to the Media Sets window and confirm that the disk set's members are listed properly, including space used and space available.