Is there yet an app to convert ver 6 catalogues to ver 10 ?

[rodlord]

It's such an obvious need that when you are forced to upgrade your backup software that it should be able to read it's own catalogues from previous versions.

 

When I discovered that version 10 was unable to do this I couldn't quite get my head around it but as I had no time available to "REBUILD" from the media I kept my old G5 going just to access the archives.

 

I had taken it for granted that it was only a matter of time before Retrospect finally got round to providing a file converter that could read ver 6 (or any other previous version) catalogues and write them out as ver 10 ones.

 

I'm not talking about tapes and tape drives here - I'm referring to removable external Firewire hard drives. Surely this is a completely different kettle of fish and there really should be no problem to do just such an app - if you're Dantz.

 

Can anyone tell me if there is such a beast yet ? - or if there is any intention to do one ?

 

I really do hope so because I still can't get my head around how really naff this is.

 

It would take days ... and days ... to rebuild 4 catalogues, each containing 5 hard drives, from the media. The tedious repetitive changing of 20 hard drives would make you bonkers.

 

Thanking you hopefully ...

 

Rod

[Mayoff]

If it was possible to just "convert" the catalog files from version 6 to 10, it would have happened years ago. It is not possible. No other company or individual will ever be able to offer this as an option.

 

The Retrospect 6 catalog files are missing fundamental volume data that is required by Retrospect 8.x and later. The only way to acquire this data is by reading the backup media directly. The missing data is then written to a new Retrospect catalog file during the catalog rebuild process.

[rodlord]

OK - thanks Robin.

I suppose I will just keep one of the old Mac minis to access this data if it is ever needed.

[137491BFCBC98DE1E040000A2A666149]

That's exactly what I've done in one of my environments, Rod Lord. We have our 'legacy' Retrospect 6 tape archives and our 'new' Retrospect 10 disk-based backup and archives. We even have a second PowerPC Mac Mini already pre-configured should the Mac Mini running Retrospect 6 do a face-plant. Crazy as it may seem, of the 15+ years of DDS tape archives, about 4 times every year we pull something from the late 90s or early 2000s. It makes everyone SO happy, especially management and bean-counters.

[mixaudio]

I'm trying to cope with the fact that Dantz won't offer a utility to convert v6 catalog sets.

 

I'm painfully discovering that rebuilding from media WON'T bring ALL sessions/snapshots back (yikes!).

 

My backup sessions in a particular set started in 2007. After "rebuilding from media" in v11, I see sessions only from 2010 to date, but no sessions from 2007 to 2010. I also clicked the "retrieve" button that appears on the lower right corner (this in v11) which allows you to add  sessions that appear listed there. Still there was nothing from 2007 thru 2010.

 

I know FOR SURE that backup sessions between 2007-2010 exist and are catalogued. If I browse the v6 catalog in Retrospect 6 (re-booting from an external drive with OSX 10.6.8) all those sessions appear listed. 

 

Rebuilding from a 1.1 TB backup is taking almost 10 hours and I've done it 2 or 3 times so far.

 

After rebuilding I tried running a "copy" script to see how much data was actually "saved" onto a new v11 set. As expected, only data from listed sessions is copied (2010 to date), so about 1/3 of data backed up between 2007 and 2010 is being left out.

 

So far, I've spent a bit over 50 hours attempting different things trying to get those sessions between 2007-2010 to become available in a Retrospect 11 Media Set rebuild but no success yet.

 

Right now, I'm attempting a full "data copy from one set onto a new set" in Retrospect 6, hoping that this will result in a media set that will include ALL sessions from 2007 to date that didn't appear in my first attempts to rebuild in v11. Then, re-boot in Mavericks and attempt a new "rebuild" from the resulting copied media set (another 8-10 hours for this… dang!).

 

If this doesn't work, I'm thinking of attempting a "repair" of the v6 data set and see if that does anything to the media set and then one more "rebuild" in v11.

 

Last, if none of this works, I'm considering a full "extract" of all 1.1 TB as individual files and folders onto an available drive. Obviously all "sessions" or "snapshots" from v6 catalog will be become useless. My other concern is that this will result in a lot of duplicate versions. Besides at some point I may have re-named hard drives or root folders, which will create even more duplicate files.  I guess then I'd have to manually "groom" the resulting extracted data…

 

Next… a big frustration sigh.

 

Good luck to me…

[Don Lee]

I saw this "missing snap" problem when I went to v8 as well, and learned that the "missing snaps" were also "missing" in Retro v6. It's not that the conversion can't recover them. The older Retro didn't keep them. There is nothing to recover.

 

The files are still there, but you have to search for them.

[mixaudio]

Thanks iCompute, that's true. I can still search for individual files and they'll be there. The issue would be with files or groups of files that were backed up multiple times, which would result in multiple versions of the same file. That's where the snapshots would help in knowing which version to retrieve based on the date of the snapshot.

[Don Lee]

Exactly right. It's a pain that the snaps were not kept, but the data is gone. Kiss it goodbye. At least the files (all the versions) are still there. If you care enough to search, you can get them back. If you want to restore a "snap", it's probably doable, but would be painful.