Rebuild a HD catalog from the catalog in the AIT drive's Flash RAM?

[lincolnstoller]

This question is about how to rebuild a corrupted Retrospect catalog using the memory-based catalog that is created in RAM and stored on the actual backup cartridge of an AIT DAT drive.

 

In case you are not aware, Retrospect stores a catalog of the contents of the backup medium on the hard disk that is being backed up (or on some other medium). But when this catalog gets corrupted it must either replace, discard, or rebuild it. To replace it with an older version looses the most recent information. To rebuild it usually requires reviewing gigabytes of data read from a slow perpherial, which can take days. But with the advent of AIT drives, which store this catalog in a Flash RAM chip that piggy backs the tape cartridge itself, restoring should be both easy and more secure (since it does not depend the integrity of the catalog on the medium that you're backing up).

 

However, I now realize that I've never had to rely on this RAM-based catalog. And now that I want to use it, I don't know how to tell Retrospect that it's there. Maybe you can tell me or, if you don't know and you have an AIT drive, then you'll definitely want to learn!

 

Here is the scenario:

 

During our last network backup the server crashed while compacting the catalog and now the catalog is unreadable and must be repaired. With previous "dumb" DAT drives this required rebuilding from the tape itself, or restoring an old catalog. But we're now using and AIT DAT drive that stores it's catalog on its own Flash RAM chip. But if it tell Retropsect to "look for" the catalog, it can only see the devices on the network and the AIT DAT drive is not a network device. So it cannot "see" the catalog stored on the AIT drive's memory.

 

I am going to try telling Retrospect to rebuild the directory from the tape, but it does not seem that Retropsect knows that this is an AIT drive and not a regular drive. Perhaps there is some other utility buried in Retrospect that knows to distinguish the AIT's RAM from the AIT drives DAT storage. Do you know? Can you tell us?

 

Thanks.

[AmyJ]

I don't know about the RAM method that you're referring to, however, you don't have to start a catalog rebuild over from scratch if you have an older copy. Restore the older copy and then use Tools > Repair > Update Existing to bring the catalog up to date.

[lincolnstoller]

I have found out that Amy's suggestion to go back to an existing catalog and update is the best that one can do.

 

I called Dantz tech support and asked them about those on-cartridge memory chips that we pay so much for on the AIT cartridges. These little chips are supposed to store a directory of the tapes contents and they boost the price of the tape from around $10 to $80 each.

 

Well, the tech person told me that he'd recently returned from a trip to Japan where he was told by the Sony Corp, who makes these AIT cartridges that NO ONE has yet made any software to read these chips. Not even Sony!

 

So guess what, the AIT is a scam. It is quite a bit faster, but that has nothing to do with the chip that we pay so much for. That chip does nothing, nothing reads it, it serves no purpose. The AIT "promise" is like purchasing purchasing a car with two engines in order to get more power, when the second engine is not even connected.

 

Amazing.