VXA Ecrix SCSI LVD Drive and MacOS X queasiness

[laarree]

I have a 2-year old VXA-1 Ecrix Tape drive with an LVD

 

SCSI interface which I had been using with great reliability

 

with Mac OS 9 on the older of my two Macs, a B&W G3 that

 

came with an Apple-supplied Adaptec 2940U2B SCSI card.

 

 

 

I've been transitioning to MacOS X over the last couple of

 

months, using Retrospect 5, usually either backing up to a

 

Firewire hard drive or rebooting into System 9.2.2 to back up

 

to the Ecrix drive because of the warnings about Adaptec

 

SCSI cards being unreliable with MacOS X that I had read on

 

this website.

 

 

 

Tonight I tried backing up for the first time to my Ecrix drive

 

in MacOS X 10.1.5, using the very latest update of Retrospect 5,

 

and it seems to be doing its job very nicely, with a 9-gigabyte

 

backup with verification enabled about 40% finished as I write

 

this from my second Mac.

 

 

 

Am I being too trusting? Would it be wiser to always reboot

 

into System 9 all the time to do my tape backups? If Retrospect

 

is verifying the files I'm backing up, need I worry about data

 

corruption?

[AmyJ]

In reply to:

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Am I being too trusting? Would it be wiser to always reboot into System 9 all the time to do my tape backups? If Retrospect is verifying the files I'm backing up, need I worry about data corruption?

---

 

 

 

Retrospect cannot successfully backup OS X while booted into OS 9. If your concern is only to backup data files, and not the system or permissions, the backup will be fine in OS 9.

 

 

 

You may be okay if Retrospect is verifying the files without error - but there is no guarantee that the files will be restorable in a pinch. It's impossible to predict when/if the card will work reliably in OS X. We don't support it for this very reason.

 

 

 

The list was updated today - you may want to check your card options for OS X.

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=27381

[laarree]

AmyC, thanks for your reply and for the alert about

 

the updated list of compatible SCSI host adapters.

 

I looked over the new list and was heartened to see

 

more SCSI cards supported for MacOSX 10.2.1 than

 

before, including a couple of previously unsupported

 

Adaptec cards.

 

 

 

Based on the recommendation of someone on Apple's

 

Discussion Forums, I purchased an ATTO UL2D card

 

a couple of days ago for a remarkably low price and

 

now see it listed as compatible with 10.2.1, which is

 

a relief.