Backup problem. Retrospect reprted "probable dirty heads", tape skipped

[ampnerd]

Hi,

 

Can anyone offer any advice with a backup problem I've just had? I am running a single machine (G4 dual) with Mac OSX Tiger and Retrospect Backup version 6.0.204 and backing up to a LaCie Firewire AIT2 Turbo drive.

 

I was doing my usual sequential backup of audio data from my external firewire drive to AIT2 turbo tapes (80 gig tapes) when I got an error message I have not seen before. The tape in the drive (number 6 in a set) had been started during the previous backup about a week ago so it had very little data on it and was nowhere near full. About 30 seconds into the backup after writing only 8 smaller files it Retrospect stopped and came up with an error message saying something to the effect of "could not write data, probable cause dirty heads". I think this is what it said, I should have taken a screen shot of it but didn't think to. Obviously it halted the backup and I had to start the backup again. First I ran the cleaning tape on the AIT drive to make sure the heads were clean. When I ran the backup again it immediately asked me for a new tape (to be tape 7 of the set). It would not allow me to continue using tape 6 which has very little data on it.

 

My question is how can I go backwards and make it use tape 6, even if I have to lose the previous backup? Do I have to recatalog all the tapes to do this? If so this will be so time consuming as to not be worth it but I would rather not lose an almost new $40 tape it I don't have to.

 

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.

 

Sean Beresford

[twickland]

Quote:

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My question is how can I go backwards and make it use tape 6, even if I have to lose the previous backup?

 

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While you can't make Retrospect add more to tape 6, you can reuse the tape itself, at the cost of losing the backups that are on it.

 

Go to Configure> Backup Sets> Configure [name of your backup set]> Members. Highlight the name of the 6th member and click on "Set Missing."

 

Then erase the "missing" tape and you'll be good to go.

 

At the next backup, Retrospect will back up any files previously backed up to tape 6 that are still on your source volume.

[ampnerd]

Thank you very much Twickland, That's exactly what I was hoping to do. One more question though, Now that I have marked tape 6 as missing and resumed my backup it is asking for a new tape which will be named tape 7. Is there no way to have it completely forget tape 6 now and have it name this new tape, tape 6, like it used to be? I thought maybe I could rebuild the catalog but that didn't do anything.

 

Thanks again

 

Sean Beresford

[twickland]

Quote:

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Is there no way to... have it name this new tape, tape 6, like it used to be?

 

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No, there is no way to do this, unless and until you choose to recycle the entire backup set.

 

Remember that tape 6's contents are still listed in the catalog, even though you have told Retrospect to forget that member. It wouldn't be a good thing if Retrospect allowed a user to call different members by the same name, which is basically what you'd be wanting it to do.

[rhwalker]

I think it might be possible if you go in Retrospect, with the tape still having this member name (6-backupsetname), and erase the tape (Configure > Devices, Erase), Retrospect will forget the tape's contents and the member name. I think that you can then use the erased tape.

 

I've only tried this when skipping to new media (when Retrospect chose the wrong barcoded tape in the autoloader, but that's a different bug that I won't rant about right now), not when deleting the last member. But, in the case of a new media skip, you can erase the tape, go into the catalog directory, delete the catalog for the auto-named backup set [xxx], then go to the script and change the name of the destination to the correct name.

 

Again, I haven't tried it for erasing a member, but you might try it. You will get a warning about the tape being part of a backup set, and the erasure also causes the contents to be forgotten. Just a thought.

 

Russ

[ampnerd]

Thanks Twickland and Russ for your input. I did as you suggested Twickland and it's working fine with tape 6 as "skipped".