guyvdb Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I understood that reading a version 6 catalog is impossible in version 8. Also that reading tapes catalogued in version 6 is not possible using version 8. Restoring the content using version 6 and then archiving using version 8 would seem an option, but we have an archive of 150 LTO3 tapes... This would not fit on a harddrive. What should we do ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Keep version 6 on the computer. You can use that version for future restores. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guyvdb Posted July 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Not a very elegant solution... certainly not for lookups in the archive: was it the old or the new version ?... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 It is the only option right now until we can get some translation filters added into version 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guyvdb Posted July 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Are you intending to do so ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Yes it is in our plans. We are working on stability and snow leopard support right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMRMacBackup Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Very good news, Robin! Thanks for keeping it at the top of the list. Maintaining an older computer with pre-Snow Leopard software is not an option I relish to consider. As far as I can tell, with the removal of all PowerPC based code from Snow Leopard it will not allow us to continue using Retro 6 as a fall-back option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 As far as I can tell, with the removal of all PowerPC based code from Snow Leopard it will not allow us to continue using Retro 6 as a fall-back option. No, you misunderstand. Support for Classic MacOS (9.x) was removed from Leopard and will not reappear in Snow Leopard, and Snow Leopard will not boot on PPC computers. But that does not mean that Snow Leopard computers cannot run PPC applications in emulation under Rosetta. While Rosetta (emulation of PPC code) is not installed by default, it can still be installed as an option and is needed for some slow developers (e.g., Adobe). No, the above is not covered by any NDA agreement. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oneiricsys Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 It appears that something with OS X Server 10.5.7 broke our SCSI / LTO3 Quantum HH drive. Only Retrospect 8.1 is able to communicate with the LTO3 drive. The error I receive is: Trouble reading: "1-CATALOG" (0), error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, etc.). To get the backups running again, we are running with 8.1. However, our client needs to be able to access data on the version 6 tapes. What is the best way to do this? Is there a known issue with OS X Server 10.5.7 and 6.1.230? Thank you, David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerrysg9 Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 Wow, this is very inconvenient. I have about 500 LTO backup tapes that I was using with Retrospect 6, and now I have added a new location and need to keep adding to the ongoing catalogs, but i have unknowingly purchased v8. Can I get my money back and buy version 6? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bpieber Posted July 19, 2009 Report Share Posted July 19, 2009 I would like to express my vote that this feature gets a very high priority. I have already bought the upgrade to version 8. However, I am reluctant to install it because my users would not understand having to look in two places when they do a restore from an archive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pingu Posted September 22, 2009 Report Share Posted September 22, 2009 Likewise I would like to add my vote to this getting bumped up the list. It is currently the only thing preventing us from purchasing the upgrade to 8. We have a large archive of data that is constantly being added to but more importantly regularly being restored from too. The solution of keeping a version 6 about is not really feasible as we have limited drives available and cannot be constantly swapping them between machines/processes. Is there an ETA for these filters or is it possible that this will be vaporware? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pingu Posted September 23, 2009 Report Share Posted September 23, 2009 Also that reading tapes catalogued in version 6 is not possible using version 8. Is this in fact correct? I had considered recreating our catalogues in v8 from our older v6 tapes, but I guess this will not be possible if we can't even read from the tapes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 23, 2009 Report Share Posted September 23, 2009 Also that reading tapes catalogued in version 6 is not possible using version 8. Is this in fact correct? Yep. Retrospect 8 cannot read backups made by any earlier version of Macintosh Retrospect. What an amazing concept that a backup program should be expected to read older backups that it made. From the Retrospect product blurb on EMC web site: ... Whether you are protecting photos of your company picnic or your business financial data, Retrospect 8 for the Mac will give you the peace of mind knowing your critical files are backed-up and secure. Key Benefits With more than two decades of proven reliability for millions of users, EMC Retrospect is the backup software that small and midsize businesses rely on to protect their valuable information against costly data loss. Doesn't do much good if you can't restore your valuable files from that "two decades of proven reliability" that you trusted Retrospect to preserve. And this is supposed to be backup software that we can trust? What hogwash and what false promises. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pingu Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 Hi Robin, Any news on when we can expect to see this? I don't want to whine, but it is obviously very inconvenient for thos of us that have been relying on Retrospect for our archiving for years... Cheers Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 Sorry, I do not know the answer to this question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pingu Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 Thanks for the reply Robin. Do you think it would be possible to get some idea from Development? Or even where it sits on the roadmap? It's just that this is really holding us up from deploying an updated backup and archiving solution. Cheers Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 this is really holding us up from deploying an updated backup and archiving solution. I wrote about this recently in another post, and I repeat it here not as an excuse, but as some perspective on the realities of this situation. In December 2006, EMC killed Retrospect. Dead. End of life. The majority of the engineers and testers and managers scattered, only a skeleton crew left to support the user base until the support contracts ended. But somehow, somewhere, someone convinced somebody that Retrospect was a valuable property for EMC, and something was done. We know that Robin never left, and we know that Eric Ullman came back (I saw him doing demos at the Mark/Space booth at Macworld Jan 2007). It's also been stated that at least one other original Retrospect-Mac engineer came back to the project. So while Retrospect 8 has some major issues (both in performance and usability), we have to take it for what it is. If EMC had not changed course, those of you (us) with long-term archives would _still_ need to use Retrospect Classic to Restore files going forward. If they can integrate the previous _two_ backup storage formats (4.x-5.1 & 6.x) that would be fantastic. But if not, well, you can either use Retrospect 8 for current and future backups and 6.1 for old Restores, or use another product for current and 6.1 for old, or just stick with 6.1 for everything. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 If they can integrate the previous _two_ backup storage formats (4.x-5.1 & 6.x) that would be fantastic. But if not, well, you can either use Retrospect 8 for current and future backups and 6.1 for old Restores, or use another product for current and 6.1 for old, or just stick with 6.1 for everything. You and I will just have to disagree on this, Dave, and my disagreement is quite vigorous. From the Retrospect 8 product blurb: With more than two decades of field-tested expertise and millions of users worldwide, EMC Retrospect is the most trusted name in Mac backup. Whether you are protecting photos of your company picnic or your business financial data, Retrospect 8 for the Mac will give you the peace of mind knowing your critical files are backed-up and secure. ... Reliable and Secure With more than two decades of proven reliability for millions of users, EMC Retrospect is the backup software that small and midsize businesses rely on to protect their valuable information against costly data loss. Those of us who have been using Retrospect for these many years (we have been using it for over 16 years, since Retrospect 2.0) have believed this promise. We have relied on Retrospect to protect our valuable information against data loss, and we need to continue to be able to retrieve that valuable data. Retrospect 6.1 cannot run on the current Mac OS, and is totally unsupported on current Apple hardware and software. There is only one thing that a backup program absolutely has to do, and that is to reliably retrieve backups that it has made. It doesn't have to be able to update those old backups, but it does have to be able to retrieve from them. I don't care whether EMC requires purchase of a separate add-on to be able to retrieve older Retrospect backups from 2.0 through 6.1, but that capability needs to be provided. Otherwise, the promise to small businesses to "protect their valuable information against costly data loss" is a hollow one, and shows the lack of commitment of the vendor to protecting our data. Otherwise, Retrospect 8 is little more than an interesting eye candy demo in pre-beta form, without documentation, that crashes a lot and needs continual hand-holding. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pingu Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 Hi Dave, Thanks for your reply. I completely appreciate what you are saying here, and also understand that this is not necessarily an easy nut to crack for the development team (and I understand the reason you are unable to give a more concise reply Robin). However, whether the team is seasoned or new, EMC as a company (and particularly a storage company!) do have a duty of care to their customers who are using existing products to support these products (I believe 7 years after EOL is mandatory in the EU) and make any new products backward compatible (this sadly is not mandatory, just common sense). Just imagine if Adobe bought Quark and killed the product, but then changed their minds, released a new version, but a version that could not read any existing Quark documents, only save new ones in a new format. Customers would be up in arms! I'm not asking that Retro 8 be able to add to older catalogues, just read from or convert them to new format. Surely there must be documentation regarding the older format knocking around at EMC that would enable the new team to write a convertor. If not, the old team should be tracked down and have unspeakable things done to them (legally of course!) We've already switched our backups to Netvault, but we'd like to continue using Retrospect for archiving. Unfortunately, this issue pushes us day by day closer to switching to PresStore. I hope that EMC can resolve it quickly, or Retrospect runs the risk of becoming just as dead as it was before to it's longer term customer base... Just my tuppence worth. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallworld Posted September 28, 2009 Report Share Posted September 28, 2009 I doubt you need MORE votes but I have to say- Retrospect had a good name and was a decent product. Leaving users with no real forward path is just bad business as much as anything. Those of us with large archiving systems now have NO reason not to switch to other offerings or we light candles and wait for a filter. At a minimum, i'd be willing to re-catalog my tapes to avoid having to restore them then archive them again. While I like the new product,translators are a deal breaker if they do not happen soon. While I am at it, where is that FTP functionality too!!! My $.02 Sean McNulty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmankono Posted October 1, 2009 Report Share Posted October 1, 2009 I'm somewhat surprised to see the postings here from people who have used previous versions of Retrospect, since each successive version since version 4, that I remember, has not been able to use old catalogs. Most versions could read the old catalogs, but never use them, forcing the creation of new catalogs for "current" backups, and with such a fundamental change, I'm not terribly surprised that legacy software can only be used with legacy systems. Granted, I would love it if 8.x could read at least 6.1 catalogs & tapes, but I'll be keeping around a small handful of G4s and G5s for use as machines to use to connect to the old tape library to restore files from the 6.1 backups. Not much different than it would be if we decided to switch to BakBone, Bru, or Atempo, since the old tapes would still only be readable by the old server. Until there's an answer, I'm just looking forward to continued improvements in 8.1 so I can migrate completely, instead of using 6.1 and 8.1 for different backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 1, 2009 Report Share Posted October 1, 2009 I'm somewhat surprised to see the postings here from people who have used previous versions of Retrospect, since each successive version since version 4, that I remember, has not been able to use old catalogs. Most versions could read the old catalogs, but never use them, forcing the creation of new catalogs for "current" backups, and with such a fundamental change, I'm not terribly surprised that legacy software can only be used with legacy systems. The issue is not whether the catalogs have to be rebuilt; the issue is whether the data that was backed up can be retrieved. Some of us have a requirement that we be able to retrieve a version of a file as it existed on any date back to the epoch, on any machine, even if that particular computer no longer exists. The requirement is NOT that we be able to do a bare metal restore, but that the file can be retrieved, so that we can meet litigation discovery requirements. The need is not to be able to search old catalogs, but to be able to restore old files as they existed on a certain date. This is not an "archiving" issue, but some people might have that concern as well if they have deleted the files when they became archived to tape, etc. And it's not solved simply by keeping around legacy hardware. Macintosh 68k machines can't even communicate with current version Mac computers on the same network - the versions of AFS are too incompatible. Sorry that you don't understand the issue. The need is real, and we trusted Retrospect to meet our backup needs. It's not an artificial requirement, and we are willing to pay for that capability, if needed as an "add-on". Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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