Running v6 and v9 on same box?

[theboyk]

Does anyone know if it's possible to run Retrospect 6 and 9 (unlimited server/unlimited client) on the same machine? I have about 100+ AIT-2 Turbo tapes (Retrospect 6 catalogs) and 20 LTO-4 tapes (Retrospect 6 catalogs) and I'm just upgrading to Retrospect 9. The problem is, I still need to access the old Retrospect 6 catalogs. I had planned on keeping the old Retrospect Server box (PowerMac G5) for dealing with the AIT-2 tapes/catalogs (FireWire-based), and hoped to migrate the LTO4 system to a new Mac Pro (SCSI-based).

 

But, obviously, the big problem is, v6 catalogs aren't compatible with v9 (thanks Retrospect) and the only way to get the v6 to v9 is to rebuild the catalogs from the tapes. I'm averaging about 4.5GB/min on the rebuild and given that, it's going to take a long time to rebuild all the v6 LTO4 catalogs. Ignoring the fact that the rebuild process interferes with the backup process (for obvious reasons), there's also the issue of having to pull data from the LTO4 archives while all this is going on. And, unless both versions of Retrospect is running on the same machine, I have to keep swapping the drive from machine-to-machine as required.

 

I can have both versions of Retrospect installed on the same machine — but the problem is, I've been unable to get Retrospect 6 to see any of the attached devices (SCSI LTO4 and Firewire AIT-2 drives).

 

Has anyone had any success doing something like this?

[Lennart_T]

But, obviously, the big problem is, v6 catalogs aren't compatible with v9 (thanks Retrospect)

You really shoulf thank Apple. They added a lot of metadata to the file system in Snow Leopard that can't be handled in v 6. Besides, the v 9 catalog files are compatible with the Windows version of Retrospect, which adds Windows' metadata to the equation.

I can have both versions of Retrospect installed on the same machine — but the problem is, I've been unable to get Retrospect 6 to see any of the attached devices (SCSI LTO4 and Firewire AIT-2 drives).

 

Has anyone had any success doing something like this?

You have to turn off the v 9 engine (not just exit the console) for v 6 to see the devices.

Version 6 is not supported on Snow leopard (or later). What do you run?

[Don Lee]

Two things:

 

1. As outlined above, you have some limitations on v6 (10.5 or earlier) and v9 only runs really well on 10.6 and better. You also have to run only one at a time. Running both on the same box is *possible*, but not particularly practical. I think you are better off keeping the old PPC machine around to run v6, and swapping the tape device, hoping that usage of the v6 retro is minimal.

 

2. When you rebuild the tapes, you get the "catalog" back, but in my experience, you lose all your snapshots. This means that you can search for files, but cannot restore to any one of the points in time on your backup set. This is sub-optimal, but I can live with it.

 

I still believe that retro v9 is a big step forward. It would be nice to have it do a better job with v6 backup sets, but realistically, this need is more theoretical for me than actual. In fact I access the old tapes very, very rarely. The biggest issue is that if I *do* need them, the time it will take to retrieve the data is much longer than it shoud be, because the rebuild take so long.

[theboyk]

Thanks guys — I ended up just getting a second LTO4 drive for the new (now my third) Retrospect box (box 1 is an old G4 which runs Retrospect 5 to access old DAT tape backups; box 2 is the G5 running Retrospect 6 to access AIT-2 Turbo and LTO-4 tapes via v6 catalogs; and now the third is a Mac Pro running Retrospect 9 to access LTO-4 tapes via v9 catalogs). Good fun.

 

And I don't buy blaming Apple on this one. If Retrospect was fully committed to the Mac (which, from the past decade, I'd say they're only partially committed, depending on which of the many parent companies of Retrospect has been running the division) and Mac-based customers, they'd develop a catalog conversion tool. If they wanted to build such a tool, I honestly believe they could, but I think it's just "easier" for them to say "rebuild your catalogs". Anyway, doesn't really matter at this point...

 

Thanks again.

k.