larth Posted April 14, 2003 Report Share Posted April 14, 2003 Can anyone recommend a reliable way to duplicate an individual DAT/DDS tape which is a member of a larger Retrospect tape backup set? Retrospect itself only seems to duplicate entire backup sets, which is NOT what I need. The backup was run on a Macintosh, but if necessary I can use Windows or Unix PC's. And I'm willing to buy another tape drive or whatever it takes. Ideas? --larth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 14, 2003 Report Share Posted April 14, 2003 I do not know of a way an individual can copy a tape while maintaining your original backup set format/ability to restore with Retrospect, outside of using a "backup set transfer". Computer Coversions in San Diego offers this type of service. http://www.data911.net/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larth Posted April 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2003 Doesn't it seem wrong that this would require the help of data recovery and conversion specialists? All I'm asking to do is duplicate my data as-is from one tape to another. All that it could possibly require is a tiny bit of code to tell two drives to start reading from the first block of one tape and write the identical thing on the other. My 2 cents, I guess. I'm just trying to better safeguard my data, duplicating each tape as it fills up ... but as simple as that concept is, I'm finding that Retrospect really stands in the way. It imposes workflows on me that really don't suit my archival needs. --larth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 Dantz recommends making redundant backups part of your backup strategy. Rotating backup sets will allow you to keep copies offsite for security and protection against damaged media. The User's Guide lists mulitple strategies that are popular with users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larth Posted April 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 I said: Quote: It imposes workflows on me that really don't suit my archival needs. AmyC replied: Quote: Dantz recommends making redundant backups part of your backup strategy. Rotating backup sets will allow you to keep copies offsite for security and protection against damaged media. The User's Guide lists mulitple strategies that are popular with users. AmyC, it would've been really nice if you hadn't replied by telling me what workflows Dantz wishes to impose on me. It shows that you're not really listening. I am trying to archive, as in permanent backup, so as to store inactive data for possible future retrieval while clearing space on disk for current work. I can't re-use tapes, so rotating sets isn't a relevant solution. Redundant backups are useful, and I'm doing that, but I still find that when a tape goes bad, I'm down to one good copy of that data, and I've got no reasonable procedure to replicate the lost tape. So I bite my nails waiting for the other tape to fail. I feel it's ridiculous that I have that data, but can't replicate it anymore. Sorry to be so gloomy, but such are my circumstances. --larth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powermeck Posted May 5, 2003 Report Share Posted May 5, 2003 ...as you are willing to use other OSes like Windows ;-) and buy a secondary tape drive I would recommend NovaStor TapeCopy. I have no experience with DAT tapes, but it duplicated my LTO tapes at roughly 1GB/min. All duplicated tapes are readable and accessible by Retrospect. TapeCopy would even let you migrate to a different tape format. Good luck :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larth Posted May 6, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 6, 2003 Thanks for the suggestion, Powermeck! This sounds like the sort of solution I need. I'll look into it. --larth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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