MikeHam2 Posted January 20, 2010 Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 I am running Windows XP Home SP3 and using Retrospect Express V7.6.123. I am backing up to an IOMEGA 200 GB portable hard drive.I have been faithfully backing up important files on a weekly basis. Earlier this month I lost all the files in My Documents folder and went to use the restore function on Retrospect only to find that my backup set files were all ".rdb" files rather than ".rbf" or ".rbc". I did a search and found several .rbf files on the portable hard drive in the System Volume Information folder. However when I directed Restore to that folder it responded by saying that the file "is not a catalog file or is heavily damaged". I have learned that my fixed hard drive on my computer is NTFS while the portable hard drive is FAT 32. I don't know if that makes a difference or not. Please, I need help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 20, 2010 Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 Mike, Is it possible that you had your .rbc (the catalog, which is really a database index into the .rdb - the database itself) stored in your My Documents folder, causing the catalog to be lost? If so, you should be able to rebuild the catalog from scratch from the .rdb files. You need a catalog in order to do the restore. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHam2 Posted January 20, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 Russ, That certainly is possible as all my files and folders within My Documents vanished. How do I rebuild the catalog from scratch using the rdb files? I cannot access my "help" file from the program for some reason. Thanks for your help. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 20, 2010 Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 I cannot access my "help" file from the program for some reason. Hmmm.. that might point to some other issues. I'm not a Retrospect [color:red]Express[/color] 7.6 user, but you might consider uninstall/reinstall. Here's the documentation: Retrospect documentation How do I rebuild the catalog from scratch using the rdb files? See this thread and the solution at the end: Rebuild Retrospect Express 7.6 catalog Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHam2 Posted January 20, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 I was thinking of uninstalling and re-installing also and will try that. I will review the information links you provided. Thanks for your help. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHam2 Posted January 20, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 Hi Russ, I uninstalled/reinstalled Retrospect and it fixed the "help" issue. I also read the entire thread and fix you provided. I had been following the "repair catalog" instructions and when it was looking for the rdb files I mistakenly had it "open" the DSS A backup folder where the rdb files were located. This time when I got to the DSS A backup folder I clicked OK. That did it, it is now in the process of rebuilding the catalog (thank you). Now I have never done a restore before, so if I could ask you one more question.... Since My Documents files disappeared, I have been able to "restore" most of the deleted files. When Restrospect restores, does it overwrite existing folders/files? If I wanted to save my current My Documents folder should I rename it? Thank you for all your help. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 20, 2010 Report Share Posted January 20, 2010 It all depends on your settings. Answer is usually yes. If you are asking whether it will delete the My Documents folder before restoring to it, the answer is usually no - it just adds files, creating folders if needed. See the Restore section in the manual (link is above). Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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