jcr Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 My problem occurred with two 1-gig DIMMs. (The only 2-gig configuration supported by this 2-slotted g4 powerbook). 2-gig configuration swapping the 1-gig modules to each others' slots also still exhibited the Retrospect problem. Any configuration tested below 2 gigs did not exhibit the problem. I tested functioning configurations using either 1-gig DIMM singly in either slot, and 1.5 gigs (1-gig and 512-meg module). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skipjack Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 Just an FYI/UPDATE I have been having this problem as well with nothing fixing the problem…UNTIL. Just on a whim I decided to update all my firmware on all my external devices. I happen to have all Lacie products. Well guess what? After the updates I AM NOW ABLE TO BACK-UP TO DVD's with my 2 full gigs installed. Hurrah!!!! I can only hope that was, in fact, the issue and continues with success. So, give it a try. Worked for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcr Posted May 14, 2007 Report Share Posted May 14, 2007 Sadly, my issue happens with an internal DVD drive and no external devices connected. Ah well, I'll be backing up to file on an external disk and then transferring to DVD when I have time to remove RAM temporarily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eluwish Posted June 12, 2007 Report Share Posted June 12, 2007 I appear to have the same problem. It's been a month since the last post, no recent updates to Retrospect, and no mention of this problem anywhere in the Knowledgebase. Did you ever get a response to your trouble ticket? 15" PowerBook 1.67GHz G4 Standard Panasonic built-in DVD burner 2GB RAM upgraded recently from 1GB Retrospect apparently can't access the DVD drive. I doubt there is a humongous amount of DMA activity in the few test reads and writes performed by the drive configuration routine - and not much in restoring a file from a backup set either. The standard driver, after a fresh install, reports "incompatible media" when attempting to restore a single file from a DVD backup set. That's why I attempted to perform the configuration. In the past a configuration took less than 5 minutes - now it never completes, and the disc spins down before any seeking motions are made. I appreciate the help from various folks, but please bear in mind that this is the Desktop version of Retrospect, not the server version, and that both Mac OS X Server and the Xserve are significantly different from the fixed architecture of a laptop or iMac. For many of us who need a versatile backup AND archive application, one that backs up a SINGLE copy of a file when it moves or is duplicated in many directories, there is really no substitute for Retrospect. If indeed EMC does not support users like me (I hope it's not true), there really isn't anywhere else to go. I hope I don't have to remove a RAM chip, restore 9 years of backups and re-archive them using a different program. Ouch! Ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted June 12, 2007 Report Share Posted June 12, 2007 Quote: I appear to have the same problem. Perhaps, perhaps not. You have not provided enough configuration information to tell. Quote: Standard Panasonic built-in DVD burner And what DVD burner would that be? Apple uses different DVD burners in its iMacs, and, if you read these forums for past threads/posts on this same subject, one of the excuses that EMC support has offered for DVD non-support was that they tested their code and got it to work on a certain iMac in Apple's test labs on a certain date, and that Apple changed the model of DVD burner in later iMacs. What DVD burner model is shown in Apple System Profiler? What model is shown in Retrospect's Configure > Devices, Device Status? Quote: please bear in mind that this is the Desktop version of Retrospect And what version of Retrospect would that be? 6.0.??? 6.1.??? And what version of Retrospect Driver Update ("RDU") are you running? And what version of Mac OS X are you running? Not trying to be difficult here, just trying to ensure that the needed information is provided to the Retrospect support people and programmers, if they ever care to address this issue. Quote: no recent updates to Retrospect The only announced planned update from EMC is a minor tweak to the existing Rosetta-emulated version, some unspecified time after the release of Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) in October, in order to support Leopard. No update has been announced to fix the long-standing bugs. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted July 18, 2007 Report Share Posted July 18, 2007 Thought I would add my 2 cents onto the pile. I have been using Retorspect since the beginning of time, or darn near. It has always had its quicks, but has performed well. Recently I noticed I was no longer able to get past inserting a DVD into the drive for Retrospect. I was amazed that a piece of Apple supplied hardware actually died. I haven't had any hardware from Apple die since an old hard drive in an SE-30. Further testing showed the DVD drive to be working just fine. I kept playing. I finally came to the conclusion that the software was the issue. So I did some google searches and find others reporting the same issue, and sure enough I recently took my Intel Imac up to the max of 3 gigs of ram. Hmm, lets pull one out the 2 gig module and see what happens. Sure enough retrospect is back to working. I have no plans of living with only 1 gig of ram. Sure hope they get this fixed soon. Regardless of what Russ wants to say, this is not a bad ram problem. For one thing, the software has not even started playing with ram when this bug pops up. It doesn't even get to a point where it recognizes the disks in the drive. Given enough time it will sometimes report that the media is not compatible, other times it just gets stuck and a force quit is required. Please fix this bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 18, 2007 Report Share Posted July 18, 2007 Ok, I stand corrected. It's not the first time I've ever been wrong. But, trying to be helpful, I did take the time to try to replicate the problem with our Xserve G5 and was unable to do so. So this problem is specific to only certain hardware configurations. It's an odd bug. Those of you who are having the problem seem to have narrowed it down to a very specific case that should be easy for EMC support to reproduce. I guess I am fortunate that the problem doesn't occur in our configuration. Regards, Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted July 24, 2007 Report Share Posted July 24, 2007 Was hoping to find a solution on here.. I have tried most of the recent drivers, etc. Still no worky with the full memory installed.. I really do not want to keep installing and removing my ram!! I wonder if the bug exists in older versions of the software..? Anyone find any clues to the issue? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted July 24, 2007 Report Share Posted July 24, 2007 After reading another topic, I wonder if the +R media will work with 2 gigs or more. I was reading a post where a MacbookPro user with 2 gigs was having the same issue, but when he switched over to +R it works fine. Russ, where you using +R? Anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 24, 2007 Report Share Posted July 24, 2007 Quote: Russ, where you using +R? when I did my test I was using DVD-R. As I indicated above, we only do backups to tape in our autoloader; the test I did on our Xserve G5 (with Matsushita UJ-845 SuperDrive) to try to help the poster here was the only one I have ever done to DVD, and it was to DVD-R (Memorex 8x, in case that matters). Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted August 13, 2007 Report Share Posted August 13, 2007 Still looking for an upgrade or something to fix this!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolamike Posted August 29, 2007 Report Share Posted August 29, 2007 I have this exact issue also. 20in 1.8GHz iMac G5. Just upgraded to 2G RAM, and no joy with Retro and the internal DVD drive. I think I will have to jump to external HD backup if we don't hear anything soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted August 29, 2007 Report Share Posted August 29, 2007 Even though this issue is not the "call for unsupported drives" that Robin Mayoff (head of Retrospect support) has requested, you might want to post this issue in the following thread so that it could be addressed in the same field trip to Apple by EMC: EMC plans a field trip to test DVD support Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted August 29, 2007 Report Share Posted August 29, 2007 I removed the thread Russ noted above (because we made the Apple trip yesterday). I don't yet know which drives QA found at Apple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolamike Posted August 30, 2007 Report Share Posted August 30, 2007 Just tried something that was mentioned earlier, namely to switch to DVD+R disks (from DVD-R). Works like a charm. No custom config needed. RDU 6.1.8.101. 20in 1.8GHz iMac G5 with 2GB RAM. A little ironic, because when I first got this iMac, the opposite was true. In fact I spent a fair amount of time trying to get RT to burn to DVD+R with no success, and had to settle on DVD-R, which I kept hearing was somewhat inferior for this use. But all is happy now -- anyone want to trade 100 shrink-wrapped DVD-Rs for DVD+Rs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted August 30, 2007 Report Share Posted August 30, 2007 Quote: Works like a charm. No custom config needed. RDU 6.1.8.101. 20in 1.8GHz iMac G5 with 2GB RAM. Just a bit of confirmation, please: (1) have you tried this after quitting Retrospect, moving any .rdi file in "/Library/Preferences/Retrospect" to the desktop (so you can put it back after the test without having to re-do any custom config, and so Retrospect can't find it for the test), restarting Retrospect and trying with DVD+R ? That would confirm that no custom config is in use. (2) When you do Retrospect's "Configure > Devices", and click the "Device Status..." for your DVD drive, what shows in the Driver column? (3) What happens if you try RDU 6.1.11.101? RDU versions are here: RDU version history (you can always revert back to RDU 6.1.8.101 if that doesn't work) Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolamike Posted August 31, 2007 Report Share Posted August 31, 2007 In reply to rhwalker: 1) I just tried this now. I did have one recently created RDI file (that I moved to the desktop). Restarted Retrospect. Same trouble-free DVD+R performance. 2) Panasonic DVD+RW (5.12) 3) Same trouble-free performance. So I'll just use RDU 6.1.11.101 now. I must say, it's an odd bug, this DVD-R conflict with a 2GB RAM configuration. DVD-R and DVD+R must be more than trivially different. Here's to hoping that either Blu-ray or HD-DVD dies a quick and definitive death, and we are all spared from these kinds of shenanigans in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolamike Posted August 31, 2007 Report Share Posted August 31, 2007 Just a little more info for posterity: - DVD+R media used: TDK 4X - DVD drive info (via System Profiler): Model: MATSHITADVD-R UJ-825 Revision: DBN7 - Most recent successful burn used: Retrospect v 6.1.126, RDU v 6.1.11.101 and the other stuff: - 20in 1.8GHz iMac G5, 2GB RAM Mac OSX 10.4.10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted September 6, 2007 Report Share Posted September 6, 2007 Good to hear the +R is working for you. Kind of sounds like some sort of driver error for the -R format..? The bad news is for us folks that have years of -R backups that we have to restore from on a regular basis. I wish this would fix this ASAP. Very annoying pulling Ram out of my Mac. Would an external DVD drive cure this issue? -Wayne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted September 7, 2007 Report Share Posted September 7, 2007 There is a cure!! I started a new thread, and it finally got to the heart of the issue and a quick solution. It seems this has been a known issue with a easy cure for some time, yet nothing was shared in this thread. Basically they picked up the Bug when they added Blue Ray support to the driver pack. Solution is to use RDU 6.1.8. This can be downloaded from: http://download.dantz.com/archives/updates/rdu618101.dmg The other Thread: http://forums.dantz.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/99834/an/0/page/0#Post99834 Hope this helps you all out. My Imac Intel with 3 gigs is back to full working order with this RDU change. -Wayne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hermie Posted September 7, 2007 Report Share Posted September 7, 2007 Hi Wayne, Thank you very much for the tip! But, halas, on my machine it doesn't make any difference. Retrospect "not responding", force quit etc. Perhaps it's a G4 PPC versus Intel thing in combination with the 2 GB, dunno. The only thing I noticed is that my external isn't seen anymore, but Retrospect working with DVD's? Nope... Do I think EMC will ever look into this and fix it? Nope... Have fun, Hermie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcr Posted September 7, 2007 Report Share Posted September 7, 2007 This didn't fix it for me (PowerBook 17 1.67ghz G4 with 2gigs maxed out). But then, the problem described in this thread occurs with all media, not just DVD-. Sounds like a different issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotozuk Posted September 7, 2007 Report Share Posted September 7, 2007 You guys might have drives that require the newer drivers... Sounds like they are aware they have an issue with the drivers and hopefully will have that cured in the next upgrade. Good luck, I know how sucky it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hermie Posted September 7, 2007 Report Share Posted September 7, 2007 Nah, it's not the drivers, my older internal is seen and supported alright, the newer external is also seen by the later RDUs. Just put in 2 GB of RAM and kaput Retrospect goes. This has been reported for ages now, but no action whatsoever is taken by the developers. Looks to me that Retrospect Mac has become abandonware. Have fun, Hermie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hermie Posted April 5, 2008 Report Share Posted April 5, 2008 It works! It works! After more then five years it finally works! The latest driver update (rdu 6.1.14.101) did the trick! So it's fixed, well for me it is. The internal drive reads old backup sets again and my external FW drive configured just fine. It's a LaCie TESTCorp model and of course the only one Retrospect doesn't support through RDU. Oh well, I'm going to try a one disc backup with verify, but I'm sure that will work out OK too. Have fun, Hermie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.