waldorfm Posted April 27, 2010 Report Share Posted April 27, 2010 Hello, I have attached a SCSI Quantum LTO-2 HH tape drive via Firewire using the Ratoc FR1SX SCSI/FW converter. The setup works fine in Retrospect 5.1, 6.0. Version 6.1 freezes as soon as I select the tape from the device view. 6.1 also freezes with native SCSI when using any Adaptec SCSI card. Version 8 sees the device, but does not see any tape media inserted, showing (empty). I don't have much experience with version 8, but I cannot get it to work. Any ideas? Kind Regards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted April 27, 2010 Report Share Posted April 27, 2010 Well, Adaptec dropped support for Mac OS as of Mac OS 10.3. You don't say what version of Mac OS X you are running. Get rid of the Adaptec card for starters. It's unclear from your post whether you are trying to get this going via SCSI or via Firewire. Don't think that a SCSI to FW converter is supported. Get an ATTO HBA. Exact card you need will depend on your hardware, but you haven't provided any details. Details are needed if you expect help. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waldorfm Posted April 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2010 Hi, Retrospect 5.1 and 6.0 were the last versions that worked for me with any Apple or Adaptec SCSI cards, although drivers up to MacOSX 10.4 are available. Anyway, I guess that's history. In some situations, backup to tape is the only reasonable option. The only option for SCSI with an iMac, MacMini and MacBook is a Firewire to SCSI converter. It's not the greatest and has limits, but it worked with Retrospect 5.1 and 6.0. What is so special about Atto's SCSI that Retrospect requires? It is really limiting Retrospect to specific hardware. I have tested Retrospect 8 on a Macbook Pro, MacOSX 10.6 with a Ratoc FR1SX Firewire to SCSI converter and a Quantum LTO-2 HH tape drive. The SCSI converter does not use any special software or driver. The problem with 8 is that it sees the drive and tape slot, but does not read the tape media or react on eject, etc. Kind regards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted April 28, 2010 Report Share Posted April 28, 2010 What is so special about Atto's SCSI that Retrospect requires? Um, supported .kext drivers for Mac OS 10.4.x and 10.5.x and 10.6.x, for starters. That's the card that all of the backup vendors recommend for their software. It is really limiting Retrospect to specific hardware. Yep. Take that up with Adaptec. I have tested Retrospect 8 on a Macbook Pro, MacOSX 10.6 with a Ratoc FR1SX Firewire to SCSI converter and a Quantum LTO-2 HH tape drive. The SCSI converter does not use any special software or driver. The problem with 8 is that it sees the drive and tape slot, but does not read the tape media or react on eject, etc. Yep. That's what "unsupported" means. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waldorfm Posted April 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2010 I just tried Retrospect 6.0 on the same computer with the same setup and it works fine. Too bad Version 6 has other limits. Whatever Retrospect has done as of version 6 has broken SCSI communication or made it ATTO only. I have used Retrospect since version 1.1 on Mac and version 5.0 on PC with all kinds of backup media. Since version 6.5 on PC and 6.1 on Mac I had all sorts of unusual issues with SCSI tapes and tape libraries. An older version of the RDU often solved the issue. Perhaps it would be a good idea for Retrospect to partition its device driver support rather than putting it all in one file. Kind regards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted April 28, 2010 Report Share Posted April 28, 2010 I just tried Retrospect 6.0 on the same computer with the same setup and it works fine. Too bad Version 6 has other limits. Whatever Retrospect has done as of version 6 has broken SCSI communication or made it ATTO only. That's a little confusing. In the first paragraph you say that Retrospect 6.0 works fine on this computer, but in the second paragraph you say it is broken in version 6. I've never had an issue with Retrospect 2.0 through 6.1.230 using an ATTO SCSI HBA card. Well, there is one issue that has existed for years with Retrospect 6, in that there is a difficult to reproduce bug whereby Retrospect 6.1 can sometimes cause an interrupt to be dropped for a disk drive on the same SCSI chain when it does its initial device scan, causing the system to hang waiting for that disk transfer completion that never occurs. Only solution of which I am aware is to put the tape drives and autoloder on their own SCSI channel, which works perfectly. There are many, many deficiencies in Retrospect 8, which is very immature. Version 6 was very mature. Version 8 is an entirely new code base. Many bugs, many features missing. Perhaps it would be a good idea for Retrospect to partition its device driver support rather than putting it all in one file. That sounds like a good idea, but it won't happen with Retrospect 6.x, which is a dead product. All development now is on Retrospect 8. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted April 28, 2010 Report Share Posted April 28, 2010 I have attached a SCSI Quantum LTO-2 HH tape drive via Firewire using the Ratoc FR1SX SCSI/FW converter. The setup works fine in Retrospect 5.1, 6.0. Then you were lucky. Retrospect, from version 5.0.205 on, was never tested with such converter devices, and the software was never qualified for their use. If you had called tech support in 2001 you would have been told the same thing. The fact that the current version of Retrospect also does not support that sort of kludge hardware is nothing new. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waldorfm Posted April 29, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2010 I meant SCSI screwed up as of version 6.1. Retrospect 6.0 has a problem with save dialogs under OSX 10.6 and cannot be used. Meanwhile I also noticed a "high byte" scsi termination problem because of the 68/50 cable setup and fixed it. Device access still works in 6.0, but Retrospect 6.1 and 8 now freezes. Same problems I had in the past using Adaptec cards, without 68/50 scsi conversions. Retrospect 7.5 under Windows XP has exactly the same problem. I installed Backup Exec under Windows on the same computer, same hardware, to see if some other backup software can confirm the problems. It works fine, which tells me there is no problem with the hardware, OS or device drivers. IMHO, there is simply no better backup software than Retrospect, but I cannot use it anymore. I'm not going to buy a "big" Mac and an ATTO scsi card and hope it will work with a tape drive. I think the SCSI/Firewire and SCSI/USB2 converters are very attractive and sometimes only solutions. It would probably not hurt Retrospect to consider support for such setup in the future. Thanks and kind regards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdjf Posted November 29, 2010 Report Share Posted November 29, 2010 I use 2 MacMini Servers for a small Workgroup. There is no way to connect a SCSI card to this machine. Instead of having to buy an oversized MacPro for a few People, I wanted to continue to use my AIT3 Tapes with my Compaq AIT 100 (previously used with a G4 Tower). Because of this, I also think, it would be great, if Retrospect 8 would support these Converters. In my case, the only way to get it work is to use a Ratoc FR1SX SCSI/FireWire Converter. This solution works well with 250 MB/m. Maybe, it is different with a LTO drive. Is your Ratoc Firmware up to date? Regards from Germnay Jan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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