gadmin Posted March 11, 2010 Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 Hey Guys, I'm new to the forum, but I am about to flood it with all of the issues I have been having with Retrospect 8 Mac since upgrading from 6.1 in a desperate attempt to find some help and have a somewhat reliable backup solution. This post is referring to the Media Set corruption problem I am having.. I run a proactive script to backup mainly laptop users on a daily basis. The media set is comprised of 4 internal drives totalling 3500GB unformmated. Server is a brand new Mac Pro 2.66Ghz Quad Core running 10.6.2 and with 3GB of ram. This is the 2nd time that the media set I created has become unreachable by the server. In the past I have completely formatted all the drives and rebuilt it in hopes that it would become more stable but as of 3 days ago, my media set cannot be accessed by retrospect. I am using 1127GB out of an available 3175GB. If I try to "locate" the media set, I get an error message stating that the catalog is damaged or unsupported. The repair function does absolutely nothing. The drive containing the catalog file has all kinds of space free. Clicking "verify" does nothing. In the past a few restarts sometimes gets the media set to recognize but that isn't working now. I am completely fubar'd it seems and will have to start all of my backups from scratch. Anyone else have this issue? PLEASE HELP ME! lol.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted March 11, 2010 Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 Have you tried a "rebuild" of the catalog file? You've only done "verify" -- which won't fix anything. Though I can't imagine how long a rebuild of a 1.1TB media set will be. How large is your catalog file for that media set? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gadmin Posted March 11, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 (edited) I've begun a rebuild. Started it 2 hours ago, it's still chugging away so it might require a good amount of time. What I was finding more perplexing is the reason behind the issues I've been having with my media sets. They just don't seem stable? Edited March 11, 2010 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted March 11, 2010 Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 It's hard to say. If your engine *crashed* while using the media set -- that could have messed up the catalog file -- but not the data "members" of the media set. You didn't say *where* your media sets are located or specifically what they are other than "4 internal drives totalling 3500GB unformmated". (Meaning, is this a RAID? Is it 4 individual drives where the media set members are going from disk to disk as the first drive fills up, etc?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted March 11, 2010 Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 I'm new to the forum, but I am about to flood it with all of the issues I have been having with Retrospect 8 Before "flooding" please indicate that you have searched the Forum for existing threads; your "issues" with the program may have already been discussed. The media set is comprised of 4 internal drives totalling 3500GB unformmated No, a Media Set is not comprised of drives (or volumes), it is the combination of a Catalog file and Member(s) of media. There are various Types of Media Sets for use with various sorts of media. - Are you using a Disk Media Set? - If so, how many Members are in the Disk Media Set? - Are you using a File Media Set or Sets? - Are the four drives configured as a RAID? the media set I created has become unreachable by the server What does this mean, exactly? What are you seeing in the program's Media Sets window? my media set cannot be accessed by retrospect. See above; please explain. I am using 1127GB out of an available 3175GB Further suggesting a RAID; please confirm. If I try to "locate" the media set, I get an error message stating that the catalog is damaged or unsupported The Locate button in the Media Sets Toolbar is not to "locate" a Media Set, it is to find a Catalog file. - What (exact) steps do you take that result in the error message? The repair function does absolutely nothing Absolutely nothing? No drop down sheet as shown on page 232 of the Users Guide? (the actual steps in the newly released guide are not quite accurate, but the dialogs the program will display are as shown) Clicking "verify" does nothing Nothing at all? Does the button highlight when you press it? Does the Operations Log show anything? Anyone else have this issue? It's unclear what the issue might be, if it's Catalog related or Member related. More information would be needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gadmin Posted March 11, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 The media set catalog file is located on a drive internal to the retrospect 8 machine and was about 84GB in size when it failed. I am not using any hardware or software RAID, just 4 independent drives as part of a disk media set, filling up as the data written to them increases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gadmin Posted March 11, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 No, a Media Set is not comprised of drives (or volumes), it is the combination of a Catalog file and Member(s) of media. There are various Types of Media Sets for use with various sorts of media. - Are you using a Disk Media Set? - If so, how many Members are in the Disk Media Set? - Are you using a File Media Set or Sets? - Are the four drives configured as a RAID? Yes, I am using a disk media set comprised of 4 members. The drives are not configured as RAID. What does this mean, exactly? What are you seeing in the program's Media Sets window? My proactive backup ceases to operate as indicated with a red x beside the script. I went into the scripts Media Sets window and noticed that the "Media Set A" that I was using for a data destination was no longer appearing active. (I am rebuilding now so no longer have that error to access). When I selected "Media Set A" in my media set window then chose repair, there was zero activity on the screen. "Verify" also yielded the same result. When I tried to choose "locate", then selected my catalog file, I was given a message that the catalog was either damaged or incompatible. [i am using 1127GB out of an available 3175GB Further suggesting a RAID; please confirm. The Locate button in the Media Sets Toolbar is not to "locate" a Media Set, it is to find a Catalog file.- What (exact) steps do you take that result in the error message? My apologies if this was confusing, I should have referred to it as the catalog file. Absolutely nothing? No drop down sheet as shown on page 232 of the Users Guide? (the actual steps in the newly released guide are not quite accurate, but the dialogs the program will display are as shown) Clicking "verify" does nothing Nothing at all? Does the button highlight when you press it? Does the Operations Log show anything? Correct, absolutely nothing and when I opened the log, it did not contain any record of me attempting to make these selections. The button did highlight when clicked. It's unclear what the issue might be, if it's Catalog related or Member related. More information would be needed. Well I appreciate the response regardless, thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted March 11, 2010 Report Share Posted March 11, 2010 (edited) the "Media Set A" that I was using for a data destination was no longer appearing active. I'd sure like to know exactly what you see that leads you to describe it this way. Not that I doubt your overall report, just that details matter. - Is there a red "x" next to it? - What does the "Status" field in the Summary tab read? - Does the path shown in the "Catalog" field give the correct location of your Catalog file? When I selected "Media Set A" in my media set window then chose repair, there was zero activity on the screen. If you select some _other_ Media Set and click "Repair" do you get the expected drop-down sheet? I am rebuilding now Let us know if that fixes/changes things. Dave Additional Thoughts: I am using a disk media set comprised of 4 members Has your Media Set already written to (and filled up) Members # 1-3? It's always good Retrospect best practice to maintain backups of your Catalog files. While they can be rebuilt from scratch using the Media, they can also be rebuilt using an older copy as a base, which can save considerable time (although the Fast Catalog Rebuild makes it less drastic of a time saver then it used to be). But pulling a backup copy out of TimeMachine or an Automator folder can still be very helpful. Edited March 12, 2010 by Guest added Additional Thoughts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted March 12, 2010 Report Share Posted March 12, 2010 I'd also suggest: 1) Compressing the catalog file (if you don't already). If it's 84G *compressed* -- it will likely take 4-5 times that amount of disk space to rebuild it, so be aware of that. 2) Using Disk Utility to do a "Verify Disk" of both your engine computer (the one containing the catalog file) *and* your RAID. ..especially if this happens frequently. Whoops -- just read more carefully -- it's not a RAID -- so be sure to Verify Disk for all of those disks. And, if it were me, and I had a media set *that* large, I'd think about putting it on a RAID instead of stand-alone disks... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gadmin Posted March 12, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2010 I'd sure like to know exactly what you see that leads you to describe it this way. Not that I doubt your overall report, just that details matter. - Is there a red "x" next to it? - What does the "Status" field in the Summary tab read? - Does the path shown in the "Catalog" field give the correct location of your Catalog file? Unfortunately when I was writing the description, that screen was no longer available to me to describe, thus the vague description, sorry about that. If you select some _other_ Media Set and click "Repair" do you get the expected drop-down sheet? Yes, I do! Let us know if that fixes/changes things. It finished rebuilding but I couldn't manage it post-rebuild. It would not allow me to add new volumes to it and therefore I could not increase the size to use as a backup. I had to get these backups running again so I just deleted the entire media set, and created a new one after reformatting my disks again. The last time I did this, the media set lasted for a couple of months before "corrupting" Has your Media Set already written to (and filled up) Members # 1-3?It's always good Retrospect best practice to maintain backups of your Catalog files. While they can be rebuilt from scratch using the Media, they can also be rebuilt using an older copy as a base, which can save considerable time (although the Fast Catalog Rebuild makes it less drastic of a time saver then it used to be). But pulling a backup copy out of TimeMachine or an Automator folder can still be very helpful. No, it had only just filled #1 and began about 20% into #2 at the time. Yes, perhaps I should start backing up the catalog files, good suggestion. I hadn't been compressing the catalog files but if this is a good practice, I will also try that. Is it too late to make that change once the media set has been recreated? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted March 12, 2010 Report Share Posted March 12, 2010 You can always set a catalog to be compressed at any time. However, IIRC, it won't do any compression until the next time you write something to it (which I've reported as a bug, IMO...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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