Upgrading from Retrospect 4.3 -> 5.0.238

[StephenC]

I upgraded from v. 4.3 to v. 5.0, today. I'm running under Mac OS 9.2.2 on a PowerMac G4 (AGP, 400 MHz). I do a daily scripted backup to a hard drive, rotating between three backup sets. Under 4.3, my current setup had run without problems since June 2001.

 

After installing the latest version, including the driver update and current client software (I backup 1 client over TCP/IP), I tested the installation by running my daily backup. This failed with "Can't save snapshot" due to an unexpected EOF (Error -39). I ran Disk First Aid and TechTool Pro 3 on the backup hard drive and both gave it a clean bill of health. I then verified the backup set with Retrospect and found that it did not consider it to be damaged. Similarly, Retrospect reported that the catalog appeared to be intact. I tried the daily backup again to the same backup set and it failed in the same way. I then tried to repair the catalog for this backup set. After processing 37000+ files, the machine hung (menu bar clock stopped, gear cursor stopped turning). After waiting more than 5 minutes, I forcibly quit and rebooted. I checked the catalog and Retrospect reported that it was damaged. I duplicated the file for another of the backup sets and manually split the catalog from the file. This operation was successful (the separate catalog file is about 4 Meg). I then did my daily backup on this other backup set and it was successful. I have now tried to repair the catalog for the first backup set twice. Both times, it processed 37000+ files and then Retrospect quit unexpectedly.

 

My questions:

 

- Will splitting out the catalog file help avoid this problem?

 

- Is there anything else I should do to avoid these problems?

 

- Is there any way to recover the damaged backup set?

 

Thanks,

Stephen

[Mayoff]

1) Make sure you are not launching the old version of Retrospect while attempting to access backup sets created with 5.0. The operations log will show which version of Retrospect was running when the error happened.

 

2) If you are using backup sets created in 4.3, you should create new ones in 5.0, so you can take advantage of the changes made in 5.0 to improve file backup sets.