Bruce Abel Posted October 15, 2006 Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 I have a Macpower Enclosure for a couple of Maxtor ATA-166 250Gb drives I rescued from a dead Lacie BigDisk Extreme Enclosure. I had no choice but to buy this enclosure as the techs at Lacie don't bother to reply to emails ;-) To my delight, the Macpower box does work fine. No problems creating a HFS+ journalled volume with partitions. It mounts and allows data to be copied to it and read without any problems. Techtool Pro tests (including surface scan) give it the big thumbs up. The only reason I have this drive is to do backups of my Powerbook using Retrospect 6 Backup Desktop Macintosh. I've got the latest version running, with the latest driver updates, running the latest Mac OS X. I cannot see the drive through the Retrospect 'devices' button. These drive enclosures are popular in Australia. The largest reseller of Mac related products in Australia recommends them. Why is it not working with retrospect? Is it is as simple as 'someone has not written a driver'? It uses an Oxford Firewire chipset, which as I understand it is pretty common. I really wasn't expecting problems from Retrospect on this front. Currently I have NO backup solution. What can be done? If Retrospect tech support ever read this forum.... PLEASE HELP! Here's a link to the product in question Macpower Igloo 800 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nekr0phage Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 Quote: I've got the latest version running, with the latest driver updates, running the latest Mac OS X. This doesn't really say anything. You should give actual version numbers. Disk volumes do not show up as devices be default, they show up as volumes. If you want them to show up as devices, try enabling Special> Preferences> Media Handling> Use hard drives as removable disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 Quote: If Retrospect tech support ever read this forum.... PLEASE HELP! Bruce, these forums are user-to-user support. If you want Retrospect tech support, give them a call. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Abel Posted October 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Oh, OK. I didn't realize it was user to user ONLY. Thought I had seen responses from EMC here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Abel Posted October 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 OK, i'll be more specific. HARDWARE Macintosh Powerbook G4 1.25 Ghz processor, with 1Gb Ram -100Gb Disk and 25% freespace. Macpower Igloo 800 Enclosure - with 2 x internal Maxtor 250Gb ATA-133 drives. Enclosure uses 2 x Firewire 800 ports and an 'Oxford Firewire Chipset'. Formatted HFS+ Journalled, Partitioned into 2 x volumes. Mounts, reads, writes and tests (Techtool Pro) fine. SOFTWARE Mac OS X Tiger - Version 10.4.8 (all software updates installed) Retrospect Backup (Desktop Macintosh) Version 6.1.126, Retrospect 6.1 Driver Update - Version 6.1.8.101 Previously I was running a Lacie BigDisk Extreme without any problems. Same Hardrives, different enclosure. Would connect over either FW 400 or FW 800 successfully. Previously I had no need to set 'Special> Preferences> Media Handling> Use hard drives as removable disks.' as far as I am aware. * The drive partitions mounted on the desktop. * The drive partitions could be 'seen' by retrospect when creating a backup set - Configure > Backup Sets > New. * Could use a backup set I had created for 'immediate backups', as well as regular scheduled / scripted backups. The new device behaves different;y with retrospect. * The drive partitions mounted on the desktop. * The drive partitions could be 'seen' by retrospect when creating a backup set - Configure > Backup Sets > New. Can also see via the Volumes Database - Configure > Volumes. Configure > Devices on the other hand - does NOT show the device. * Cannot use a backup set I had created for 'immediate backups'. Unsure if regular scheduled / scripted backups work - but presuming not. * The immediate backup scans the disk and then fails when it tries to find / see the disk. I'm hoping I do not have to use 'Special> Preferences> Media Handling> Use hard drives as removable disks', as I want to store other data on the drive as well as backup data folders/files, and use it as a Photoshop scratch disk for example (not at the same time that retrospect is using it of course). I am presuming from my reading of the manual that this preferences setting reserves all partitions of a disk EXCLUSIVELY for Retrospect use. I don't understand why this is not working the same as my previous device, as they are basically the same. Do EMC have to write specific drivers for each FW chipset? That seems kinda lame. I've got the 'latest' drivers, so I'm boned if that's the case, unless EMC are willing to write one (Is that a likely prospect?) Seriously hope you can give me some hints here. Regards, Bruce Abel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 18, 2006 Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Quote: Do EMC have to write specific drivers for each FW chipset? No. EMC does write drivers for DVD/CD (because of the special formatting used) and tape and autoloaders, but not for disks. Quote: I am presuming from my reading of the manual that this preferences setting (use hard drives as removable disks) reserves all partitions of a disk EXCLUSIVELY for Retrospect use. No; it reserves the entire volume (partition), but not the entire drive (i.e., not all partitions/volumes on the drive). When you made your previous backups, were they "file" backups or "disk" backups? See page 22 of the Retrospect User's Guide for a discussion of the difference. Your problem description sounds like you have the preference unchecked to "use hard drives as removable disks" (which is what you seem to want). That's consistent with the disk not showing up in the "Configure > Devices" window. Your description of how immediate backups are (not) working (fails when it tries to find/see the disk) sounds as if your immediate backup isn't set up to expect a file backup, but is instead set up to want a "disk" backup. Could you check that? Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Abel Posted October 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Russ, thanks so much for your advice, I have it working now You were correct, I had accidentally created a 'disk' backup set, instead of a 'File' backup set. I had no idea that creating a 'disk' set would mean that Retrospect wouldn't see the disk unless "Preferences> Media Handling> Use hard drives as removable disks" was set to on. I'm guessing the reason this has to be on is so that it can span multiple disks. Presumably that's why it needs to take over the entire volume. Regards, Bruce Abel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 18, 2006 Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Great, Bruce, glad you let us know what the fix was. Your details helped suggest what the issue might be. If you have other questions, issues, let us know. Regards, Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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