Question about Iomega HDD support (Firewire)

[chuckbo]

I've been using Retrospect with my Iomega 20GB and 30GB HDD drives for a long time.

I just got some larger drives to rotate in, an Iomega 60GB and an Iomega 120 GB drive. All of these are Firewire. The new drives show up on the desktop but don't show up in Retrospect. I've reformatted them to be Mac drives, and I've connected the drive directly to the Mac. They still don't show up in Retrospect.

The only step left in the manual is to contact Dantz for help, because the technical support staff is up-to-date on the latest compatibility issues.

 

I'm running OS X 10.4.8

I am not running the latest version of Retrospect -- I have 5.0.238. I'm waiting to upgrade until after I get OS X 10.5 and there's a more compatible version out.

 

So is support for these devices available in the latest Retrospect, if I decide to upgrade now?

Is there any I can do so that my version recognizes these drives?

Have I forgotten some obvious step?

 

Thanks.

chuck

[nekr0phage]

Chuck,

 

These drives should show up in Retrospect as volumes. If you are trying to get them to show up as devices you will need to upgrade to 6.1.

 

You really should upgrade anyway, there are many problems you're likely to run into trying to run 5.0 on OS10. It is not supported, and there is no guarantee you'll be able to get it to work in any form.

 

If you want to contact Retrospect support you can call 1-800-225-4880

[rhwalker]

Quote:

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I'm running OS X 10.4.8

I am not running the latest version of Retrospect -- I have 5.0.238. I'm waiting to upgrade until after I get OS X 10.5 and there's a more compatible version out.

 

---

 

You need Retrospect 6.1 to be compatible with 10.4.x metadata and for other 10.4 issues. And Retrospect 6.1 is perfectly compatible with Mac OS 10.4.8 (and 10.4.8 Server). What incompatibility is holding you back from the upgrade?

 

Now, there are some features and improvements that I wish Retrospect had, but that's for a future version.... It's not an incompatibility issue.

 

Russ

[chuckbo]

 

Here's what keeps me from upgrading.

Before I upgraded to 10.4, I upgraded a couple of times, and Retrospect didn't work so smoothly, so I upgraded, even though I didn't see anything new offered.

 

I'm upgrading to 10.5 next spring when it's released, and I decided to hold off on the latest Retrospect version, since it's been mostly working with a little hand-holding, and when they come out with a new version that's tuned for 10.5, that's when I'll upgrade.

 

Sounds like I'll have to stick with my 20GB and 30GB removables until then.

chuck

[rhwalker]

Quote:

---

 

Here's what keeps me from upgrading.

Before I upgraded to 10.4, I upgraded a couple of times, and Retrospect didn't work so smoothly, so I upgraded, even though I didn't see anything new offered.

 

I'm upgrading to 10.5 next spring when it's released, and I decided to hold off on the latest Retrospect version, since it's been mostly working with a little hand-holding, and when they come out with a new version that's tuned for 10.5, that's when I'll upgrade.

 

Sounds like I'll have to stick with my 20GB and 30GB removables until then.

chuck

 

---

We held off on upgrading our ASIP server to an Xserve because of issues with Mac OS 10.1, .2, .3 and also because of issues with Retrospect 5.x. I can understand your pain with those Retrospect upgrades. But those issues no longer exist with Mac OS 10.4 Server and Retrospect 6.1, and it works pretty well.

 

Again, I'd suggest that you upgrade to Retrospect 6.1 if you are running Mac OS 10.4.x because Retrospect 6.1 was released to support 10.4.x. If you aren't going to do that upgrade of Retrospect yet are running 10.4, and problems occur, well, you have made your choice. Retrospect 6.1 runs fine on Mac OS 10.4 Server and 10.4 non-server networked clients, which is what we use it on. We only do tape backups, so our needs and experiences may be different from yours.

 

Good luck, best regards,

 

Russ

[chuckbo]

 

Thanks, Russ, for the reply and for the advice.

I understand what you're telling me.

And like I said, it's not that I have any doubts of how 6.1 works with OS X 10.4. It's just that I plan to upgrade to 10.5 as soon as it comes out, and I expect Retrospect will be updated again to work well with that version. So you could say that I'm doubt that 6.1 will work perfectly with 10.5, and I really don't want to upgrade Retrospect this month and then again in a few months.

 

chuck

[rhwalker]

Well, that sounds like a plan but not for the reasons you give. I don't think people really realize how much of a change under the hood 10.4 was over 10.3 and its predecessors, and 10.4 really wasn't ready for prime time until about 10.4.4 or so. I don't expect many changes that would affect Retrospect with 10.5 (although the default partition map size does change, and who knows how that "time machine" checkpointing will affect Retrospect, but it sure should be motivation for a feature-enhanced Retrospect release). If you are backing up a 10.4 volume with ACLs turned on (not on by default in OS X client; but used by OS X server quite often), Retrospect 6.1 is the only way to preserve that metadata. This may not affect you if you don't use ACLs.

 

However, I (and many other Retrospect users) have been holding our breath (I'm turning blue, now) for a Retrospect update that becomes feature compatible with the Windows version, and we've got a few feature requests in, too. I would expect that to be the major reason for the next release, not 10.5. No, I don't have any inside informtion, I'm just a user like you. I just hope that the programmers are coding away, and that their code is being well-tested before release.

 

Best regards,

 

Russ