Retrospect 6.1 and Quantum VS160 Drive

[secch]

We recently had a problem with our Quantum VS80 drive and replaced it with a Quantum VS160 drive, according to both Quantum and EMC, the Quantum VS160 drive is listed as compatible but we are finding that Retrospect 6.1 will not see the drive.

 

I have already updated the firmware on the Quantum and the device drivers in Retrospect but nothing, when accessing the devices in Retrospect, I can see the device listed under it's SCSI ID but there is no manufacturer or drive information listed alongside it.

 

Can anyone please assist with some diagnostic steps or something we can try.

 

Thanks

[secch]

I would just like to add that we are running the following;

 

Mac OSX Server 10.1.4

Retrospect 6.1.126

Driver Update 6.1.9.102

Quantum VS160 (Model# BH2BA-EO) Firmware V50

[rhwalker]

What SCSI HBA are you using? What Mac ?

 

The fact that Retrospect is not seeing the drive indicates that its a SCSI problem. Does the drive show up in Apple System Profiler? Are there other SCSI devices on the same SCSI channel?

 

Russ

[secch]

Hi Russ,

 

The Mac is a Power Mac G4 running OSX Server 10.1.4, there are no other devices on the same SCSI channel but there is a Lacie external raid unit running on the other SCSI channel.

 

In System Profiler I see the following;

 

SSCI HBA is listed as;

Card Type: scsi-2

Card Name: ADPT, 39160

Card Model: ADPT, 1733406-00

Card Rom: 1.0.2

Card Revision: 1

Card Vendor ID: 9005

 

The Quantum VS160 drive is shown as a IOSCSIParallelDevice;

SCSI LT VS160 3

SCSI Target 3

SCSI Product 2001

SCSI Vendor UANTUM D

Product .UP

Vendor Not Available

 

I have checked my running extensions for Adaptec these are as follows;

Adaptec2906-2930.kext v1.0.0b6

Adaptec290X-2930.kext v1.1.0

Adaptec29160x.kext v1.0.0b10

Adaptec39160.kext v1.1.0

Adaptec78XXXSCSI.kext v1.1

 

In Retrospect Device Status I see;

SCSI-A:3:0

ATAPI-B:0:0 HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE8240B 1.05 Hitachi-LG CD-RW (5.12)

 

Hope this helps in diagnosing the problem.

 

Thanks

 

[update] I have installed the updated driver for the 39160 v1.2 and I cannot see the Quantum VS160 drive at all in System Profiler, if I go back to v1.1 System Profiler sees the Tape drive as above, I notice that there is an updated firmware for this SCSI HBA but I do not want to install as in the notes it says that it is not fully compatible with OS X.

[rhwalker]

Thanks for the complete info. It's my understanding (from a message on the Adaptec site) that Adaptec dropped all support as of 10.4.x (but its stuff is supposed to work up through 10.3.9). You indicate that you are running 10.1.4 (correct? or is that a typo? Boy, that's old, and 10.x really wasn't stable in my opinion until 10.4).

 

Wish I could help more; my suggestion, candidly, would be to get an ATTO card appropriate for your Mac. It's supported and works well. But pricy. Works fine for us, and is the standard HBA everyone uses.

 

Russ

[secch]

Hi Russ,

 

No its not a typo we are running OS X Server 10.1.4, we only used this machine as a server for the Lacie Raid box and of course to archive old client data. We are probably going to make this machine redundant after we have retrieved the archived data from tape so I am relucant to spend out on an ATTO card.

 

I think the best way forward here would be to get the old DLT80 drive repaired (as it worked before on this server, so I assume after repair it should work again) retrieve all data to a NAS box or USB HDD and decommission this box.

 

We will be using the VS160 drive on the W2K3 server so this was not a wasted purchase.

 

I will continuue to see if I have any luck in getting the Mac & VS160 to work together and post any success back in these forums.

 

Thanks for your help and advice Russ.

 

Regards

[secch]

Just as a matter of closure and to assist anyone else who may read these forum posts, I have managed to get the Quantum VS160 drive successfully working with Retrospect 6.1, below is a brief history of things done;

 

Used an old Mac G4 OS 9.2 with an Adaptec 1940UW card installed, connected the Quantum VS160 to it and the drive was seen without any problem in System Profiler, installed Retrospect 5.1 with latest driver update and the Quantum VS160 drive was identified correctly, unfortunately this did not allow us to restore the data from Tape as the backups had been done with Retrospect 6.x, but at least it verified that the the Quantum was working.

 

As the drive was being seen fine on an older SCSI HBA and older OS X this pointed to a problem with SCSI on the G4 Server running OS X 10.1.4, as I am unable to upgrade the OS of the server I attempted to move the Adaptec 39160 card from the G4 Server and installed it to a G4 running OS X 10.3.9 but system would not boot with this card installed so I guess there are compatibility issues with this HBA on later versions of OS X.

 

As luck would have it, I found one of our G5 machines had a ATTO 3L card installed, not being used (used to be an old RIP machine), the G5 was running OS X 10.4.8, I Installed the Quantum VS160 to the G5, Installed Retrospect 6.1.126, installed driver update 6.1.9.102, rebooted, copied backup sets from old backup server and we are now restoring data as I type.

 

So the short answer is, use a well supported SCSI HBA on the most recent version of OS X possible, and of course install the latest version of Retrospect and driver updates.

 

I for one will only use ATTO cards from now on.

 

My thanks to Russ in assisting with the diagnostics.