Replaced Hard Drive - Can't Perform Incremental Backup?

[mevans]

Using Retrospect Desktop version 6.0.193 on an iMac running 10.3.9.

 

I use the Backup button from the Immediate tab of the Retrospect Directory, only backing-up the individual user accounts to DVD-RW media, so no system files or applications are backed-up.

 

Recently the iMac's hard drive started to die. I cloned the hard drive to an external drive and had the iMac's hard drive replaced. I then cloned the external drive's contents back to the iMac's new internal drive.

 

I didn't realize that Retrospect looked for a particular volume to backup based on more information than just the volume's name. When I attempted to do an incremental backup with an existing backup set, Retrospect said the volume to backup was unavailable and to insert it and try again.

 

Is there any way to convince Retrospect that the new drive has the same directory structure as the old drive and to continue its incremental backups as before without having to perform a complete backup?

[rhwalker]

no

[CallMeDave]

Is there any way to convince Retrospect that the new drive has the same directory structure as the old drive and to continue its incremental backups as before without having to perform a complete backup?

 

As Russ said, Retrospect will treat the new physical volume as a new physical volume.

 

However, if the files on that volume are actually the same as the files already on the Backup Set, Retrospect will match them correctly, and not write them again.

 

If course, if the files on the duplicated volume are _not_ exactly the same, Retrospect will copy them again as it should.

 

I suppose it depends on how you did you cloning. If you did block level copying, it's likely that the files will match. But if you did file level copying, it's possible that some of the attributes that Retrospect uses to mach files were changed.

[twickland]

I didn't realize that Retrospect looked for a particular volume to backup based on more information than just the volume's name. When I attempted to do an incremental backup with an existing backup set, Retrospect said the volume to backup was unavailable and to insert it and try again.

To back up your new volume, you simply need to select it as your source. To avoid confusion in the future, I would go to Configure> Volumes, highlight the old volume (it will be grayed out) and select Forget from the drop-down Volumes menu.

 

You will also need to manually locate the appropriate catalog file for your backup set. The quickest way to do this may be to locate the catalog in Finder and then double-click on the file.

 

Is there any way to convince Retrospect that the new drive has the same directory structure as the old drive and to continue its incremental backups as before without having to perform a complete backup?

While you can't do this per se, if the files have the same parameters that they did on the old volume (size, creation date, modification date, etc.), they won't be backed up again, assuming that you haven't checked the option "Match only same location" in your backup script (this option is unchecked by default).