Havoc Posted February 9, 2008 Report Share Posted February 9, 2008 Hi Everyone, I'm currently trying to figure out why a freshly installed 6.1.138 fails to backup to a local lace 2tb firewire drive when the drive is used as removable media. The goal: to backup the internal macbookpro HD which is Tiger so I can wipe and install Leopard while knowing my data is safe. Using an external 250GB WD passport USB 2 drive with OSX 10.5.1 to boot, I installed the latest version of Retrospect. I plugged in the Lacie Biggest Disk Extreme (triple interface) via FW800 and partitioned it using disk utility into 4 even parts mac os extended journaled. I dismissed all the requests for use with time machine and restarted. I set the prefs in Retrospect to enable the use of Hard drives as removable disks for backup and then went to the devices section and formatted the partitions to make them ready for use. Everything to this point appears fine. I created a backup job selecting the internal mac HD excluding cache files and the bootcamp partition. As I run the job after about 20 minutes of waiting for it to count files (about 40gb material) the backup appears to start and shortly thereafter I get a Trouble error saying something about dirty heads. The 2TB disk tests fine and handles large read/writes just fine outside of retrospect. I tried all of it over with Firewire 400 and then again with formatting Mac OS Extended (not journaled). Same results. The last thing I tried was turning off spotlight and now it appears to be backing up the drive - not all the way through yet but it is running blazing fast (roughly 900mb/sec). ****UPDATED**** Sadly, it has quit again, error 206, trouble writing media (drive reported a failure:drty heads, bad media, etc.). Before trying the last method above I tried backing up to a file on a usb2 disk (the boot disk) and it worked but at only 350mb/sec. I'm only continuing to try with the removable disk option because I would like to get the full speed out of the application. I would like to confirm a couple of things with those of you who have this working: does it matter if the drive is formatted extended journaled or not journaled? does spotlight interfere with things - should it be off? is anyone else using a 2TB biggest disk extreme triple interface and having problems? Thanks, Havoc Keywords: trouble removable harddrive disk lacie firewire 2TB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havoc Posted February 11, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 follow up I tried a smaller firewire 400 drive from a different vendor and it had the same problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted February 11, 2008 Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 Error 206 is a hardware failure reported by the storage device and not Retrospect itself. Make sure the disks are formatted as Mac OS Extended. Also see this item from the Read Me: Using hard drives as removable disks: Retrospect's Media Handling preference formerly known as "Use FireWire/USB hard drives as removable disks" has been changed to "Use hard drives as removable disks". This new preference allows Retrospect to use Xserve RAID devices, as well as hard drives connected to the backup server via USB, FireWire, Fibre Channel, ATA, or SCSI, as destinations for removable disk backup sets. Previously these drives (with the exception of FireWire and USB) could only be used as the destination for file backup sets. Since removable disk backup sets support asynchronous data transfer (and file backup sets do not), this preference provides improved data transfer speeds. To access this preference choose Special>Preferences>Media Handling. When this preference is selected, all local volumes (except the startup disk) will appear in Retrospect's Storage Devices window (Configure>Volumes). These volumes will also appear in the media request window for removable disk backup sets, and they can be selected as the backup set destination. WARNING: Retrospect requires exclusive use of any volume selected for use in a removable disk backup set and it erases the volume entirely before using it the first time. There are some limitations to consider when using hard drives as removable disk backup set members. Retrospect will only write 1 TB of data to any single member. After 1 TB it will ask for a new member and span to that member, regardless of how much available space remains on the previous member. If you have a large capacity hard drive that you want to use as part of a removable disk backup set, partition the drive into segments of 1 TB or less for optimal use with Retrospect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted February 11, 2008 Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 > does it matter if the drive is formatted extended journaled or not journaled? No > does spotlight interfere with things - should it be off? You could probably add your Backup Set Media Member(s) to Spotlight's Exclude list (but you'll probably have to first have Retrospect erase/name the volume so you can add it properly). Disabling Spotlight (using whatever tools/utilities necessary) would be a valid test. > is anyone else using a 2TB biggest disk extreme triple interface and having problems? Lots of people have reported lots of issues with these large capacity RAID devices from Lacie, generally related to power supply problems. > Using an external 250GB WD passport USB 2 drive with OSX 10.5.1 to boot... So your boot drive is on the USB2 bus, and your Destination Device is on one of the FireWire busses? It seems that would be asking a lot of your Macintosh, to do the Read/Writes necessary to keep OS X happy using USB, which isn't all that great at multi-tasking, and then to pull/push all that data across two different communication busses. > I tried a smaller firewire 400 drive from a different vendor and it had the same problem. What happens when you boot from the internal hard drive directly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havoc Posted February 11, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 Hi Mayoff, Thanks for your reply but in each test, I did format the drive as Mac OS Extended and retrospect had full control of them. I know you have to tell people to view the read me and you should know that I did that before I even started. In addition how likely is it that a lacie 2TB drive partitioned in 4 formatted os extended fails and a separate test using an 80gb firewire from firewire direct also fails? I am going to try the test again using a USB 2.0 drive and let you know what happens. btw The Lacie drive passes a long format with zeros and extended read write tests using techtool pro under tiger and there are no available firmware updates for the firewire chipset from Lacie. The drive is under a year old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havoc Posted February 11, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 Hi Dave, I didn't consider the USB issue, I'm really looking to capture the contents of the internal drive so i figured booting from it wouldn't be a good idea if i want a complete copy. I'll try another route instead: We currently use Retropsect Server to backup clients throughout our agency - that goes to file on disk (attached raids). We're upgrading our servers and have a Leopard Test server. I'll test the latest version running on the Leopard server with the 2tb drive attached via fw800 and partitioned in 4 as before. I'll connect the laptop directly via firewire 400 and run a backup over the lunch hour and let you know how it goes. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havoc Posted February 11, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 The same error occurs so that rules out the usb/firewire idea but it could still be the lacie or the other firewire drive I. Unfortunately I don't have any other firewire devices to test to so I can't do much else. Any other suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted February 11, 2008 Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 To recap: - MacBook Pro - Retrospect 6.1.138 - RDU ???? - Boot from internal HD - Source: internal HD. - Destination: Removable Disk Backup Set. Catalog stored: ? - External Lacie hard drive used as removable device connected through MacBook Pro's FireWire 800 bus fails with 209 error - External Lacie hard drive used as removable device connected through MacBook Pro's FireWire 400 bus fails with 209 error - External non-named hard drive used as removable device connected through MacBook Pro's FireWire 400 bus fails with 209 error - Other non-named Macintosh - Retrospect 6.1.138, RDU ??? - Source: Macbook Pro connected via Target Disk Mode - Destination: Removable Disk Backup Set. Catalog stored: ? - External Lacie hard drive used as removable device connected through non-named Macintosh's FireWire 800 bus fails with 209 error So you've used two different computers, multiple different busses, connected to two different physical devices, getting the same error. - What RDU is loading with Retrospect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havoc Posted February 14, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2008 Sorry the other non-named machine is a quad-core macpro running Leopard Server 10.5.1 (test environment). The RDU version is whatever comes in the install package for 6.1.138 although I didn't specifically drag the RDU to the application folder after installing it - if that's required I'll check it tomorrow. Just for kicks I installed 2 80GB sata drives into the macpro to use as "removable" media and I'll try that too. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havoc Posted February 14, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2008 as far as the first machine recap: boot from usb external with catalog on usb external boot drive - everything else as described. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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