Why is Retrospect active with no media available?

[kyeoh]

Hi, I use Retrospect to backup two Macs to a series of external hard drives which are rotated off-site. (Retrospect 8.1 build 626, Mac OS 10.6.3, Macbook Pros.) I have a Retrospect Proactive Backup script with a Disk Media Set on each of the external backup drives. Whenever I remember, I plug in whichever external drive is in the house & let Retrospect do its thing overnight, then take the drive off-site to swap the next day. I do this every several days, according to no particular schedule, whenever I remember.

 

Now, my question is this. When neither of the external backup drives is plugged in, why does Retrospect still scan the source drives for changes & prepare itself as if to backup, right up to the point where it's ready to write to the (target external drive) Media Set? Then it stops & thinks, hey, there's nothing to write to, I guess I'll stop now. Why waste CPU cycles & slow my computer down with this futile activity? Why not look for the target Media Set first?

 

Likewise, if external drive B (Disk Media Set is plugged in, why does Retrospect scan the source drive & prepare to backup to external drive A (Disk Media Set A), then realise its error, then start again, scanning & preparing to backup to external drive B? Once again, what's wrong with checking for the target drive/Media Set first?

[Maser]

This would probably make a good feature request (about having it scan for the media set before running the script).

 

 

However, if your script has *both* media sets in it, I believe the behavior is expected for it to scan for the first media set alphabetically.

[fredturner]

This is essentially the same issue as in my thread:

 

http://forums.dantz.com/showtopic.php?tid/33702/

 

Definitely not intended or desirable behavior. Retrospect 6 would scan for which media was online, then only try to back up to the corresponding set. Yet another screwball behavior from this very buggy version...maybe since we're about half a year out from the last update, they can toss us a bone w/ a new update soon.

 

FT

[CallMeDave]

maybe since we're about half a year out from the last update, they can toss us a bone w/ a new update soon

 

See this morning's post:

 

http://forums.dantz.com/showpost.php?post/137811/

[fredturner]

See this morning's post:

 

http://forums.dantz.com/showpost.php?post/137811/

 

Somewhat encouraging, but seems like around here "in a few days" turns into "weeks", "next week" turns into "next month", and "next month" winds up being half a year later. Oh, and we're back to "beta" status...wait, that may make sense-- current build is so peculiar and buggy that it might as well be "alpha"!