Guest Posted January 20, 2003 Report Share Posted January 20, 2003 I've just purchased Retrospect 6.0/Windows. I am running it on a Win2K machine, and I have one client installed on another Win2K machine and one client running on my iBook. I've installed the Dec 2002 driver update. I can backup across my LAN to a hard drive; that works well. I can back up small files to my old SCSI Python DAT tape drive, no problem. But I can't back up a LARGE file to my Python DAT drive. I have a 4.6 GB file (DataOnly.rbf) on the Win2K machine that runs Retrospect 6.0 that I want to backup to tape. It's a Retrospect file created on my hard drive and updated daily; I want to use tape backup to move it off-site once weekly. I start the backup and all seems well -- except that Retrospect utilizes 100% of my CPU. An hour later there's no tape drive activity, the log file for Retrospect still has only a single entry "Copying ..." and the progress bar hasn't moved. 14MB was backed up quickly, then nothing. On several tries I can see it moving promptly to 14MB, then stopping. I can pause and I can click stop. The tape responds to a "stop" by rewinding, but Retrospect never really returns to its normal state and the log doesn't get updated. I have to kill Retrospect from the Windows 2000 Task Manager. I can pause the backup. It seems like Retrospect 6.0 started the tape backup, then went off into la-la land. Windows 2000 Backup has no problem with backing up the file to this tape drive, though it does take quite a long time. Hard to see how this could be anything but a really bad bug ... Are there ANY other diagnostic tricks I can use to see what's going on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 20, 2003 Report Share Posted January 20, 2003 I did some additional testing -- backing up many small files from my iBook over the LAN to tape. This time the backup stopped at 15.4 MBs. john Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 21, 2003 Report Share Posted January 21, 2003 No advice so far, but if anyone has debugging tips please let me know. I'll call Retrospect tech support in a week or two and report here on what they say. The drive is an Archive Python 25501 DAT drive. It came bundled with Retrospect/Mac @1996. This is not listed as a supported device on the Retrospect site; it's probably too old. So the 14MB limit problem may simply mean the tape drive isn't supported :-(. It works with Windows NTBackup.exe, so I may continue to use Windows 2000's bundled backup to put the Retrospect files on tape for off-site backup. john Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 I phoned tech support today, using my very brief window of "free" tech support. (Even though I knew that Dantz had a fairly aggressive approach to tech support cost recovery, I was a bit amazed by what one has to pay beyond the first few weeks of use.) They tell me my old tape drive (Archive Python 25501-XXXX rev. 2.96 SCSI DAT) SHOULD be supported and thought there might be a SCSI chain problem. I've had no SCSI problems with this configuration: Adaptec 1542c, (really old card!), Win2K, thick APS cables with active termination in the tape drive, but I installed a passive termination and switched cables just for the heck of it. This time I got to 15.8MB. Then again all activity stopped and my SYSTEM CPU UTILIZATION WENT TO 100%. Maybe I'll call again, or maybe I'll give up. It would be great if someone from Dantz tech support would notice these postings. At least I can back up to my disk drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 I agree that this does sound like a possible SCSI problem. Also this is an older device, with an old firmware version which could have trouble on a modern SCSI card. Is Retrospect using ASPI or NT passthrough (visible from Configure Devices>Device Status)? If you have not tried both, then you probably should. Tech Support can help with this. Have you tried disabling the tape driver from within Device Manager? Can you successfully back up to a file backup set? If so, then this does point to a SCSI or DAT drive problem. Because your support incident is still open (if you just called today, and the problem is still not solved), I would recommend calling tech support again for additional suggestions or ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otto Posted January 30, 2003 Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 You might also want to check the manufacturer website for a firmware upgrade. I had an old Phyton as well and always had the worst problems (like yours, partly random) and after I upgraded the firmware it worked like a charm with any software ... Otto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 30, 2003 Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 Quote: I agree that this does sound like a possible SCSI problem. Also this is an older device, with an old firmware version which could have trouble on a modern SCSI card. Is Retrospect using ASPI or NT passthrough (visible from Configure Devices>Device Status)? If you have not tried both, then you probably should. Tech Support can help with this. Thanks for the tips! It's using NT pass through, there's no ASPI driver on this Win2K machine. It's an old SCSI card too (1542c), so the card matches the drive. I'll try installing the Retrospect ASPI driver and see if I can try ASPI. Also I'll try "disabling the tape driver from within Device Manager?". It does backup to a file, no problem. I'll try tech support again if this doesn't work. I also tried looking for a newer firmware, but couldn't find anything on the net. Retrospect tech support thought the firmware was about as recent as that drive could support. thanks, john Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 1, 2003 Report Share Posted February 1, 2003 Well, there's progress of a sort. I went into the retrospect folder and installed the aspi drivers from retrospect. I did Ctrl-Alt-P-P to show the hidden preferences in Retrospect and I confirmed pass through was unchecked. So now Retrospect is using aspi, not pass through. The good news is that CPU utilization does not go to 100% and I can stop the backup. The bad news is that it only gets to 10k before stopping. Ahh well. Time to buy a DVD burner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 1, 2003 Report Share Posted February 1, 2003 I think I've reached the end of the road here. Interestingly when I set the Adaptec 1542c SCSI card to DMA throughput of 10MB/sec I actually got to about 45MB of backup (using pass through) before the backup stopped. I also tried upgrading to ASPI 4.72a (very latest Adaptec version) and switching from pass through back to aspi, but again it stops at about 7k. There's no problem erasing or formatting tapes. This is seems to be a SCSI/Retrospect/Windows 2000 interaction problem. I've checked all the parameters of the SCSI chain: drive, cable, adapter card, Adaptec 1542c BIOS settings, Windows 2000 hardware manager settings, aspi configuration, etc. No obvious problems. I do have an onboard IDE controller that mimics a SCSI controller, but I set Retrospect to ignore it and it does not appear to cause any confusion in any case. My guess (esp. because the backup ran further when I set the DMA to a higher data rate) is is that Retrospect is pumping data at this card/tape drive faster than it can handle, and Retrospect isn't backing off on the data flow. (Though that doesn't explain why ASPI stopped at 7k!) I don't know if the flaw here is in Retrospect, just don't know enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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