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Complete Restore doesn't use all five tapes


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I recently discovered that in order to rebuild a catalog of a Retrospect 6 tape set I needed to have Retrospect 10.

I installed Retrospect 10.5 on an Apple XServer running Mac OS X 10.7.5 Server and a SCSI Tape drive for LTO 3 Tapes. I was able to successfully rebuild a catalog of a five tape set.

When I did a Restore of the Set it showed that there was only 1.4TB worth of data to be Restored. Not paying attention when I started the restore I was surprised when the Restore completed successfully after Tape 3 was added to the restore process.

So it looks like there is almost one TB worth of data on tapes 4 and 5 that are not showing up in the Restore process.

Is there a way to retrieve the data from Tapes 4 and 5?

Thank you in advance.

Backup Set H.jpg

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jbalaska63,

My first suggestion is to obtain a license for Retrospect Mac 11, possibly from the same person from whom you obtained a license for Retrospect Mac 10, and to install that.  The reason is that the cumulative Release Notes for 11.0.1.110 show " Engine Fixed:  Restore issue for file with block level incremental backup enabled on two members with first marked missing (#4552)" as well as "Console Fixed: Past Backups view did not show retrieved backups (#4512)" and "Console FixedPast Backups view still showed removed backups (#4476) ".  IMHO that means a number of incomplete-restore bugs were fixed in that release. 

If a re-restore of the entire Media Set with the latest release of Retrospect Mac 11 doesn't restore from all 5 tape Members, or if you can't get a license for Retrospect Mac 11, my second suggestion follows from what Lennart_T suggested directly above.  I didn't realize until experimenting now that, once the backup destination has changed from a particular Media Set, the Media Set->Backups tab in Retrospect Mac for the old Media Set is summarized into one line for each source—with the chronological breakdown of backups for a multi-backup source still shown when you click the Retrieve button.

So if the Retrieve button on the bottom right of the Media Set Backups tab shows backups later than the dates for the first 3 Member tapes (if they're not manually marked on tape labels, you'll have to guess from dates of files restored from the first 3 tapes), create a new folder on your Destination drive or another drive, designate that as a Favorite Folder, and in turn do a Restore per pages 144–146 of the Retrospect Mac 11 User's Guide from each of those later  backups—choosing the Overwrite older files option from the pop-up menu per pages 145–146.  When you've done all of those Restores to the Favorite Folder, do a Copy per pages 135–137 from the Favorite Folder to the folder/drive which was the destination of your Restore that only read the first 3 Member tapes—choosing the Overwrite older files option from the pop-up menu per pages 135–136.  This suggestion should give you a drive/folder containing the latest versions of every file backed up on all 5 tape Members; that will have to satisfy you.

Sorry it took me until now to figure out the second suggestion.  That means, if you have to get a license code for Retrospect Mac 11 from the head of Retrospect Tech Support at (925) 476-1030‬ X806—assuming you're really in Alaska, you'll have to wait until Monday 28 December.

Edited by DavidHertzberg
Add alternative problem into first sentence of 2nd paragraph. Insert second sentence into 2nd paragraph, splitting it after that sentence.
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On 12/24/2020 at 3:58 PM, jbalaska63 said:

Also, I tried to restore the entire backup.

How did you try to restore the "entire backup"? It sounds like you are restoring to a "point in time", which (usually) won't retrieve every file that was backed up because it won't include previous versions of a changed file.

If you really want everything that was backed up (rather than everything that was on the source disk for the last back up) use the "Search for files..." option, leaving the search fields blanks. That way you'll also get eg "datafile.txt" for the original file plus "datafile.txt-1", "datafile.txt-2" and so on for the more recent versions.

Also -- to recover from v6 sets you need to have RSv10 or higher. So you could use the current version, either properly purchased or via the trial license.

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Nigel Smith,

You may be right, if the "point in time" was earlier than any backups written to the tape Member "4-Backup Set H".  Remember, jbalaska63 complained that that Member and "5-Backup Set H" weren't even mounted by the Restore.

That's why I made my first and second suggestions in this up-thread post.  Of course the "point in time" might have been earlier than some of the backups on "3-Backup Set H", which was the last tape jbalaska said was mounted.  So for safety, if my first suggestion doesn't work, maybe jbalaska63 should extend my second suggestion to the date of the first backup known to have been written to  "4-Backup Set H"—a date which may be marked on an external label.  Back in the "good old days" of mainframe computers, we used to have "tape dump" programs that would print records from a tape; maybe Retrospect Tech Support can supply one, along with an outline of the format of tape label and backup data records.

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