My disk filled up, so I bought a bigger drive. Now what?

[lhlo]

Hi folks:

Simple request and just seeking an understanding of which "concepts" I should be looking at in the user guide to accomplish what is needed.

Retrospect Windows Pro 9.5 on Windows 7 Pro.

 

My 1TB drive used exclusively for backups is almost full so I bought a 4TB drive to replace it.

My naivety suggested that a simple copy of the drive (sadly, Acronis that came with WD drive was useless in that regard) and... voila!

Doesn't appear to be the case.

After doing a simple drag-and-drop of the backup folders, as an alternative to a disk clone, from the old drive to the new and plugging in the new. No "voila". I rebuilt the catalogue files (don't know if I needed to but Retrospect wasn't seeing the same old backups on the new drive but, after the rebuild, it did see them and backups now appear to be working on the new drive with the backups as previously configured).

However, the size of the available room for backups has not expanded to meet the new, larger drive capacity.

So, what is needed (conceptually) to make 4TB-ish available for Retrospect backups and not just the 1TB-ish that it presently sees (and has almost filled)?

I had a quick look at the backup set configuration and saw no way to simply increase the size. I saw that I could "add a new member" and, perhaps, I could add a new member in the remaining 3TB of the 4TB drive but that would be a poor second choice to simply giving the current backup set more room.

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

 

[DavidHertzberg]

lhlo (demerits for picking a cutesy-poo "handle" for which I can't figure out whether the first letter is upper-case 'I' or lower-case 'l'),

First, read the boxed-in paragraph below the screenshot at the top of page 448 in the Retrospect Windows 9.5 User's Guide.  If that paragraph describes what happens when your Member is full, un-check the checkbox and increase the "Use At Most" number of GB appropriately.

Second, if that doesn't work, do what it says on pages 449-451 of the UG under "Adding a Disk to a Backup Set".  Add the new Member on the same disk as existing Member, and give it the appropriate "Use At Most" number of GB.  This post describes that as the workaround for an earlier version of Retrospect Windows.  So this is your "poor second choice", but next time you'll remember to set the "Use At Most" percentage appropriately when adding all new Members.

[lhlo]

13 hours ago, DavidHertzberg said:

lhlo (demerits for picking a cutesy-poo "handle" for which I can't figure out whether the first letter is upper-case 'I' or lower-case 'l'),

First, read the boxed-in paragraph below the screenshot at the top of page 448 in the Retrospect Windows 9.5 User's Guide.  If that paragraph describes what happens when your Member is full, un-check the checkbox and increase the "Use At Most" number of GB appropriately.

Second, if that doesn't work, do what it says on pages 449-451 of the UG under "Adding a Disk to a Backup Set".  Add the new Member on the same disk as existing Member, and give it the appropriate "Use At Most" number of GB.  This post describes that as the workaround for an earlier version of Retrospect Windows.  So this is your "poor second choice", but next time you'll remember to set the "Use At Most" percentage appropriately when adding all new Members.

Well, I thank you DavidHertzberg for refreshing my vocabulary; I had to look up how to spell "condescension".

I hope your life outlook improves while others on the forum fill your ever-so-big loafers that you can't imagine anyone doing. 

Fortunately, I have encountered others in this forum, previously, who were actually helpful and not out to prove something to the world.

[DavidHertzberg]

lhlo (the Forums software says the first letter of your "handle" is a lower-case 'L'),

I'd like to be helpful, but —especially being a Retrospect Mac administrator—I couldn't find much that would help.  Two nights ago I used the Search facility of the Forums to find a really old (2009 IIRC) post that might shed some light on your problem, but I stupidly decided not to bookmark it and the next morning couldn't reconstruct the search terms I had used.

The best I can suggest is that you Rebuild your Backup Set, per pages 533-535 of the Retrospect Windows 9.5 User's Guide.  Click All Disks in the dialog shown on page 533, because you don't want to use the Fast Catalog Rebuild info that may be stored in your Backup Set's Catalog File.  If you're lucky, that will eventually bring up a dialog that will allow you to change the "Use At Most" number of GB for your Member on the 4TB drive.  If it doesn't allow you to do that, IMHO you'll just have to be satisfied with adding a second member on the same drive—as I suggested in the second paragraph of my preceding post in this thread.  If any other "actually helpful" administrator has a better answer for Retrospect Windows 9.5, I urge him/her to post it.

Retrospect Inc. eventually noticed this is a problem, and added a feature in Retrospect Windows 11 to solve it.  Here is the entire description of this feature, taken from page 14 in the "What's New" chapter of the Retrospect Windows 11 User's Guide:

Quote

Portable Backup Sets/Media Sets

Retrospect v11 for Windows and Retrospect v13 for Mac now allow customers to move the member folders of disk sets to new locations and let Retrospect know by simply editing the members and picking the new location. There are scenarios where moving these files is preferable to a set transfer.

Informative, isn't it?   (You see, I can do sarcasm as well as condescension.  )  And you won't find any further explanation in any UG up through version 15, because Retrospect Inc. adopted a new policy with Windows 11/Mac 13.  Previously a new feature was announced in the "What's New" chapter of the UGs for the major version that introduced it, and then explained in more detail in the appropriate other chapter(s) in the UGs for later major versions.  Starting with major version 11/13, that policy was changed so that the explanation of the new feature would be done in a separate Knowledge Base article—if a Retrospect Inc. engineer felt like writing one (which didn't happen for the "move the member folders" feature—and that's not the only feature for which no KB article was written).  Meanwhile the "What's New" chapter of the preceding version's UGs would be completely overwritten with the announcement of newer features.

Now you understand why my life outlook as a volunteer Forums contributor could stand some improvement.

[DavidHertzberg]

lhlo,

I eventually tried to do a Forums search again, this time using "use at most"—including enclosing double-quotes—as the search term.  I didn't find the post I had found before, but I found one that seems to be helpful because it deals with Retrospect 10.5.  If you want to repeat the search, I suggest you ignore any posts found that are in a Macintosh forum or for Retrospect Express or are from 2007 or earlier.

Here's the thread with the post that seems to be helpful.  The post is the first one in the thread by Scillonian, who is generally quite knowledgeable about Retrospect Windows.  However here's an earlier (and thus probably applicable, even though the OP doesn't state his Retrospect Windows version) Scillonian post in a different thread, which indicates that there may be a problem because it is the Use At Most percentage that is stored.