firewire pocket drive locked

[TLReed]

I'm trying to use a La Cie firewire pocketdrive as removeable media. When Express begins the backup, I select the drive and then Retrospect tries to erase and overwrite the drive data.

 

The drive dismounts, and Retrospect comes back with an error message that the disk is locked. After rebooting, the drive remounts and has the correct storage set name. Subsequent backup attempts also fail in the same way.

 

Is there a way to use this device correctly? At the moment, I'm using it as a duplicate of the internal drive, but I want to do incrementals, not duplicates.

 

TIA for any help.

 

Todd

[AmyJ]

Please see the following tutorial for instructions on backing up to hard drive:

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=27501

[martinhenze]

Hmmmm. AmyC, I'm a bit puzzled, and I hope I haven't left myself open to some unforeseen catastrophe, but I've been backing up to Firewire HDs by telling Retrospect that they are removable. This seems to be much more flexible than doing a File backup to them since the Backup Set can span multiple drives instead of being limited to the capacity of just one.

 

I've been using two stacks of three 120gb Firewire drives to back up a 240gb server and a dozen graphics workstations for several months now. It's fast (400-500 mb/min over 100bt) and (so far) reliable. The cost per gig is roughly equal to VXA tape, and compared to tape, HD restores are almost instantaneous.

 

Why is it that Dantz only recommends doing a File Backup Set or a Duplicate to Firewire (or USB) HDs when treating them as removables is so much more convenient? Have I missed some dire warning? Have I put the whole department at risk? You really seem to know your stuff, so now you've got me worried!

[Mayoff]

By default Retrospect will prevent you from using a hard disk as a "removable disk backup set". But in some cases (like with a USB/FireWire disk or when formatted with SilverLining) the disk will show up as "removable" allowing a user to write to it as a removable. If you reinstall your operating system or upgrade your operating system the Mac OS may no longer identify the disk as "removable" which would then prevent you from restoring data.

 

Another Example: If you write to an internal hard disk as a "removable", Retrospect will issue an eject command at the end of the copy phase when the disk fills. Now when Retrospect attempts to do a verify, you won't be able to access the disk because it has been dismounted, without restarting the entire computer. A file backup set would not have this problem.

[martinhenze]

Your point about 'ejecting' the HD after the copy is a valid one, although it only happens when a session happens to fill a drive and moves on to the next -- not all that often considering I'm using 120gb drives. And actually, both the drawbacks you mention are due to Retrospect's behavior -- not to any inherent shortcomings of FW-HDs themselves. Given the advantage in speed, reliability, resistance to environmental contamination, and now bang-for-buck that HDs offer, it's about time Dantz reconsidered this strategy.

 

Frankly, I don't bother verifying my HD backups, so the 'eject when done' problem doesn't present a problem. After all, the data wasn't verified when it got written to the server in the first place -- why bother verifying a backup to an identical medium?

 

I've found modern HDs to be infinitely more reliable than traditional 'removable' media -- they're completely impervious to most of the contaminants and hazards that plague tape, MO, Syquest, Zip, Jaz, CD-R & DVD-R. Right now I can buy 120gb IBM Deskstar bare drives for under $100. FW cases are available for about $60. That works out to be less than $1.50/gig -- competitive with 'high-speed' tape and twice as fast!

 

Cost per HD gig is dropping like a rock. A year from now, you'd be insane to back up to anything else!