webdeck Posted March 3, 2008 Report Share Posted March 3, 2008 I'm using an Exabyte VXA-320 1x10 storage loader library with Retrospect 6.1.138 on Mac OS X 10.4.9. I had thought that if I erased several tapes, and explicitly gave them each a label that corresponds to the next upcoming member of the backup sets I'm using, Retrospect would honor those labels when looking for the next tape to add to the backup set. However, what I am seeing is that Retrospect just uses any erased tape it can find in the library, regardless of the labels of the erased tapes. For example, two backup sets, A and B. The next tape that will be requested for each is 2-A and 2-B respectively. I have two erased tapes in the library and labeled them 2-A and 2-B by doing a manual erase on each and specifying those labels. Retrospect will choose randomly which tape to use as 2-A and 2-B, ignoring the labels I manually assigned when I did the manual erases. I like to use bar codes that correspond to the tape labels (as best the bar codes can given the 8 character limitation), but since Retrospect seems to choose randomly among erased tapes, this doesn't work out in practice. Is there any solution to force it to use a specific erased tape? Thanks, -Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 3, 2008 Report Share Posted March 3, 2008 Retrospect typically uses the last numbered library slot first (not sure why). Retrospect X will have an option to pre-add tapes to the backup set. For now, all you can do is force Retrospect to write one file to each tape, so the tape is forced to display a tape name. You would then do a Recycle backup one time, to start at tape #1 again. It is not an easy process though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted March 3, 2008 Report Share Posted March 3, 2008 Retrospect typically uses the last numbered library slot first (not sure why). Nope. Wrong. Went through this extensively with Walter Reed at EMC support back in September 2005. He initially had the same opinion but agreed, after testing, that the choice is apparently arbitrary. The choice of which erased tape is chosen appears to be random and whimsical. This buggy behavior makes management of barcoded inventory impossible. Only workaround is to never have erased tapes in a library, wait for one of the backups to fail, then put in an erased tape of the proper barcode at the right time when that tape and only that tape is expected. Bah! This bug was fixed years ago in Retrospect for Windows version 6.5, build 319: Build 319 Bug Fixes... * Retrospect searches through all the tapes in a library looking for an erased tape with the correct name, rather than using the first erased tape. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
webdeck Posted March 4, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2008 Retrospect X will have an option to pre-add tapes to the backup set. Is there a timeline for when Retrospect X will be available for purchase? Will it support both PPC and Intel? What will be the minimum version of Mac OS X required? Thanks, -Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 4, 2008 Report Share Posted March 4, 2008 It will be in public beta during the 2nd half of this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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