Does Retrospect really just overwrite Configs.xml and not back it up anywhere?

[crobles]

I recently opened Retrospect to find it asking me for my license code. I thought that was odd but I put it in and to my horror, EVERYTHING in retrospect was gone. No history of previous backups, no scripts, no backup sets, no tape deck configuration etc. Im not sure how this happened but it seems the Configs.xml file was overwritten and as far as I can tell there are no backups of it anywhere. How a backup software just overwrites a critical file like this with no backup boggles my mind. I've reached out to support and searched everywhere but can't find anything. 

 

Any ideas?

[mbennett]

I just saw this message a couple of hours ago. Has this been resolved?

When you're setting up a script, in the Selections settings, there's a specific selection for "Retrospect Files". You should make sure that's flagged unless you're selecting the entire volume. I don't know of any reason the program would neglect to backup those files unless you selected around them and so only have a partial backup. Checking that box won't cost you anything just to make sure.

You should have run "chkdsk c:\ /f" (or the analogous command if this a Mac) to make sure the drive is healthy. That by itself might find the missing files. Since you've already recreated the Config.xml file, I'd rename that temporarily before running chkdsk in case the old one is recovered.

At worst, assuming all the catalogs are intact, you could follow the steps in chapter 17 of the User Guide PDF to move the program to a new backup computer. Drag the catalogs and drop them on top of the Retrospect icon (NOT the open program). That will recreate the sets, but not the scripts. Have any passwords or encryption keys handy before you start this.

I hope you've already fixed this, but didn't want you to think you were being ignored.

Good luck,

[crobles]

The reason 

5 hours ago, mbennett said:

I just saw this message a couple of hours ago. Has this been resolved?

When you're setting up a script, in the Selections settings, there's a specific selection for "Retrospect Files". You should make sure that's flagged unless you're selecting the entire volume. I don't know of any reason the program would neglect to backup those files unless you selected around them and so only have a partial backup. Checking that box won't cost you anything just to make sure.

You should have run "chkdsk c:\ /f" (or the analogous command if this a Mac) to make sure the drive is healthy. That by itself might find the missing files. Since you've already recreated the Config.xml file, I'd rename that temporarily before running chkdsk in case the old one is recovered.

At worst, assuming all the catalogs are intact, you could follow the steps in chapter 17 of the User Guide PDF to move the program to a new backup computer. Drag the catalogs and drop them on top of the Retrospect icon (NOT the open program). That will recreate the sets, but not the scripts. Have any passwords or encryption keys handy before you start this.

I hope you've already fixed this, but didn't want you to think you were being ignored.

Good luck,

Thanks for your response. I've abandoned trying to recover those files at this point, I needed to backup my data and it didn't seem any of the XML or DAT files were going to be recoverable. I think the reason those files weren't part of any backup is that we use Retrospect to backup our media files that live on a NAS (we're a tv commercial production house) and weren't including the C:/ drive at all in the backups. I have now created new scripts and included the Restrospect folder from C:/ProgramData so this doesnt happen again. I feel like at a minimum Restrospect shouldnt be overwriting critical files like these. It seems the root of our problem was caused by a faulty Battery Backup that was shutting down our system abruptly.