bot486 Posted October 15, 2002 Report Share Posted October 15, 2002 I recently purchased Retrospect Express for my combo drive iBook, hoping to be able to back up on OS X. The iBook shipped with the Toshiba SD-R2002 drives installed by Apple - standard equipment... Take a look at this page that shows the incompatible hardware on OS-X: http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=osx_incompat_dev See any Toshiba drives on that page? I don't. OK, go to the link for additional searches: http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=compatibility_list type in SD-R2002, and you'll get a page that lists the SD-R2002 as 'qualified' for Mac OS. However, if you click on the link to the note, it turns out that it isn't supported on Mac OS X. You get the following note on the Toshiba drives built into the iBooks by Apple: Device Notes Macintosh: ***NOTICE**** This drive is NOT supported under any version of OS X. It is only supported in MacOS 9.1x This drive does not properly recover when a disc has a damaged track. If a disc becomes damaged due to something like power loss during backup, the SD-R2002 may display the disc as damaged in Retrospect. A user may need to use a different Retrospect supported CD-RW drive to repair the disc. An example of a drive that successfully repairs discs is the Yamaha CRW2200. This drive has slow performance because it does not support continuous write commands. Retrospect has to sync the cache after each write command. After Retrospect has gained exclusive access to this drive, the Eject button on the keyboard is disabled. Required files on Macintosh OS 9.1 (minimum): -Retrospect 4.3 -Retrospect Driver Update 2. 2 (minimum) -Retrospect SDAP Support extension version 1.2 -Toast CD Reader 5.0.x ** If you are using this option and running OS 9.2.1 disable the following extensions: -Apple CD/DVD Driver version 1.4.7 -SDAP Authoring Support version 1.2 OR Required files on Macintosh OS 9.2.x: -Retrospect 4.3 -Retrospect Driver Update 2.2 (minimum) -Retrospect SDAP Support extension version 1.2 -The Authoring Support Update Extensions: A) Apple CD/DVD Driver version 1.4.7 SDAP Authoring Support version 1.2 C) Apple Packet Media Access version 1.0.1 OR Required files on Macintosh OS 9.1 (minimum): -Retrospect 5.0 -Retrospect SDAP Support extension version 1.2 -Toast CD Reader 5.0.x ** If you are using this option and running OS 9.2.1 disable the following extensions: -Apple CD/DVD Driver version 1.4.7 -SDAP Authoring Support version 1.2 OR Required files on Macintosh OS 9.2.x: -Retrospect 5.0 -Retrospect SDAP Support extension version 1.2 -The Authoring Support Update Extensions: A) Apple CD/DVD Driver version 1.4.7 SDAP Authoring Support version 1.2 C) Apple Packet Media Access version 1.0.1 So... In talking to someone in phone support from Dantz regarding this, Dantz appears to be waiting for Apple to fix the layer of OSX that is "causing" this problem to occur. As far as I can tell, the problem is that Dantz is insisting on using a method of writing to devices that does NOT work with this device (and doesn't want to change to a method that does work); whereas Apple (and other vendors) write to this same device in a different manner which works just fine, and until Apple makes a change in the OS, we're at a stalemate regarding getting this fixed. Can someone at Dantz who knows what the details are regarding this please confirm that this is (or is not) the case, and shed some light on WHEN this situation will be resolved? Thankyou. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted October 16, 2002 Report Share Posted October 16, 2002 In reply to: As far as I can tell, the problem is that Dantz is insisting on using a method of writing to devices that does NOT work with this device (and doesn't want to change to a method that does work); whereas Apple (and other vendors) write to this same device in a different manner which works just fine, This drive does not handle media properly in OS X. Problems are seen primarily when spanning multiple discs in a single session (which other CD burning programs for the Macintosh do not do). Retrospect reads and writes data using various device transports, such as USB, IEEE 1394 or FireWire, ATAPI, and SCSI. Each device transport has its own requirements and limitations, but Retrospect can properly and completely back up data using any of these. Retrospect is not overly sensitive to errors on any transport; Retrospect simply sends commands and data to devices, following each transport's strict protocols. People from time to time contact Dantz to complain that Retrospect does not work with a device, or that Retrospect reports an error, but that another application does not. There are many possible causes for this. First, and most frightening, it is possible that the other application is simply ignoring the error, and that your data is not actually being backed up properly. Second, there are many ways to access devices, including hundreds of commands and series of commands an application can use to send data. Another application may issue commands to a device in a different order, or in fact use entirely different ways of writing. This does not make Retrospect's access methods incorrect, or inappropriate (nor the other application's for that matter). This does not mean that in some configurations other factors will not be able to interfere. The same drive works fine with Retrospect 5.0 under OS 9 with the same commands, same driver. The difference is the operating system and we've reported these issues to Apple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bot486 Posted October 17, 2002 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2002 After some experimentation, I've discovered an interim "solution" (which may be of interest to other owners of the iBook containing this Toshiba mechanism) until this is correctly resolved. 1. Get the highest quality of CD-R discs you can find. Go with brand names that either control the process of making CD-R's themselves, or get them from a high quality supplier (Ritek has been mentioned as a good supplier). Don't use cheap CD-Rs. I bought a spindle of SONY Supremas 1x-32x. (These are probably not the best, but they were the first alternative I tried to what I had been using ... imation) From what I've been able to gather on the web, Philips makes good CD-Rs also, but I haven't tried them. 2. Do not do ANYTHING else with the computer while it is doing the backup. Do not type on the keyboard, and do not click the mouse (and of course, don't let your system go to sleep). It seems to be OK to do other operations on the iBook during the verification phase after all the CD-Rs have been burned, but doing anything that will cause the drive to need to recover from a bad/missed write operation seems to be a bad thing to do during the time that Express is writing to disc. Note that just switching to a different brand of CD-Rs didn't cure the problem - it would still get the error message. Item 2 seems to be more important than the quality of the CD-Rs. I was able to do a backup that consisted of 15 CD-Rs without having a problem by simply following these two rules. Its kind of hard to not use the iBook while doing a long backup, but it beats having to throw away a bunch of CD-Rs and being totally frustrated... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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