suddenly it asks for second media though there is lot of room at first media

[eweri]

Hello!

I am a little frustrated because of an error I get all of a sudden from Retrospect. I support about 40 Retrospect-Customers and I got this error at most of my customers. Most of them running the Retrospect engine on macOS.

 

Here is what happens:

Retrospect is configured and did its job for months or weeks but all of sudden one day it asks for a second media. If you look after it there is enough space left at the first media, there is no obvious reason to add a second media to the mediaset. If I look at the media in that mediaset even Retrospect shows me, that there is enough space left.

You can restart the engine, you can do everything, Retrospect requires you to add a second media. It looks like Retrospect does not recognise the media anymore.

Sometimes If i click to add one, Retrospect shows me the first media and if I add the same first media, Retrospect accepts it and starts doing its backup on the same physical media. But now I have "1-Backup" and "2-Backup" at the same place. 

If I remember right this only happens with mediasets reside at NAS systems. I know the problem with hidden mounts getting numbers attached to thier mount point but I can rule that out.

Just at this moment of writing, I have this bug at customers site. But a little different: Retrospect wants a second media and after the timeout waiting for media it starts its backup as it used to. But there is no second media in that mediaset. 

 

Every hint is welcome, bye

[Lennart_T]

Did you just update the Retrospect version? Which version are you running?

Did you (or your customers) just update the OS on the Retrospect server computer (or the client's computers)?

(I mean something must have changed for this error to suddenly appear).

What type of media are you using?

[eweri]

Hello Lennart_T!

This effect is not correlated with any update. This happens with Retrospect version 18 and 19, I think it's getting worse with the latest version 18. Version 19 is to new to tell if it got better or worse. 

The version of macOS is 10.15, 11, 12. I think at the moment I have no engine running under macOS 13. 

Once again - it happens without any obvious changes or updates to affected systems. I can not tell if or when it happens. 

Often I fix this problem by setting up a new mediaset and deleting the old one. But as time goes by suddenly the effect appears again.

I use external hard drives or NAS systems from Synology. I am not sure, but maybe it only happens with NAS as storage.

[macpro]

I'm seeing the same behaviour under the same circumstances. Backing up to external hard drives.

[MikeHutch]

SOLUTION:

Yes it's an annoying, and a seemingly random problem. And, I know what the solution is for this problem...

Go to your Media Sets, and select the one giving you the problem, then click on Rebuild button (at the top of this section).

It will ask you for the location of the Retrospect backup files for that Media Set. You only need to select just the Retrospect folder on the drive it is stored on - the program will find the files for you.

Then it'll ask where to save the updated catalogue file - I usually replace the old one on my drive.

It wil proceed to rebuild the media set. That's it, it'll work now (99.9% of the time).

Hope this helps.