Gerk Posted January 27, 2004 Report Share Posted January 27, 2004 Hi everyone Am I alone or is this another 'known issue' with Retrospect 5.0.238 ? It 'loses' back sets at least once a week, let me explain... I have a 3 tape set (one of several), the tapes are all in use, named properly, and retrospect even knows they are set members. I put in the tape with backup server running. It says it's running the proper script, but no matter which members I insert it always says "waiting for media". It scans them but never backs anythign up to them. After this has occurred the only thing I can do with them is to set all my existing tapes as "missing" and start a new batch of them. Absolutely _nothing_ else I have tried works. The backup sets are not damaged ... I can retrieve data from them, browse them, etc, just can't run them with backup server (making them useless to me). Anyone else out there have these issues? I lose (literally) a set a week. I really can't believe how many problems and how poorly retrospect is running on my setups. It has been an uphill battle all the way and I'm seriously ready to explore new backup options, as this one is extremely unreliable, and the last thing anyone wants is backups that don't work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted January 28, 2004 Report Share Posted January 28, 2004 Hi This may be a problem with how the backup is configured. How many backup sets are actually defined in your script? What are the names of the tapes that are not recognized? Are you performing any recycle backups to erase older tapes? What kind of media rotation are you using? Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerk Posted January 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2004 Quote: natew said: This may be a problem with how the backup is configured. How many backup sets are actually defined in your script? What are the names of the tapes that are not recognized? Are you performing any recycle backups to erase older tapes? What kind of media rotation are you using? Hi nate I have 3 scripts ... each script goes to one of two backup sets (one is onsite other is offsite). Making a total of 3 scripts across 6 backup sets. They all work fine for a week or so, and then they get 'confused' and stop working. The names of the tapes that dont get recognized are: Onsite-down-rob-judith. All of the other sets are named similarly, but for the most part they work fine until one of them (and it's not always the same one) no longer gets picked up by the backup server. The only workaround I've found is to set the tapes all as missing and make a new set. It gets rather tiresome to have to chase down and redo complete (large) backups once a week or more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerk Posted January 29, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 Anyone have advice? Or has anyone else run into this issue? /me is getting very frustrated, I've never had this kind of issues with commercial software that I was unable to resolve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted January 30, 2004 Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 Hi Sorry for the slow response. You mentioned that all of the sets are named similary and that you have a total of 6 sets? Are the set names identical or just similar? Retrospect appends a number and a dash to the name of each tape. I wonder if the backup set names you have chosen are long enough that the label becomes unreadable after that information has been added? Are you doing this with standard scripts or with Backup server scripts? Do you have recycle backups scheduled at any time? Are the backup sets rotated on a set schedule or at random intervals? Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerk Posted February 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 2, 2004 The names are similar, not identical though. Also retrospect _prepends_ the dash and number, (before not after the name), so that shouldn't make a difference in theory as the names are not that close. The names of all the media are fine, and when I check them they even identify as being set members. I am using a backup server to do all of this. No recycle backups, just standard backups. I manually rotate the tapes at various intervals (I usually just monitor when a set is done and change to the next tape set). I think I found one of the issues at hand with this just a few moments ago though. While running the backup server, it seems that it doesn't always properly pickup tape changes!! This happens both when I pause the server, and when I do not pause at a tape change. I noticed this as I just changed a tape (which it didn't pick up properly), so I quit backup server and went to the main application... looked in devices, and lo-and-behold .... it thought it still had the previous tape in it (the name of the media was still the same as the previous media). Ejecting the tape and re-inserting it again with the device window it then picked up the media name properly, and re-launching the backup server it then worked. For this instance it solved the immediate problem, but my original problem is yet unresolved. With the original issue it knows it has the proper media, yet it refuses to backup to it. In the Backup server it even shows the proper script is running (I have disabled all other scripts and had exact same problems). buggy buggy buggy! I think it just enjoys eating my backup sets. 7.5 Terabytes of backup sets lost to date and counting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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