kaikow Posted February 4, 2004 Report Share Posted February 4, 2004 When doing a recycle backup, does not Retrospect first delete the old backup set? If so, should not the new backup set be able to make use of all space on the backup media (external USB drive)? I've done two Recycle backups over the past few daze to two different USB hard drives. In both cases, the resultant backup set is extremely fragmented. On 28 Dec 2003, a Recycle backup took only about 9.5 hours. the two, done this week, took about 18 hours and 13:20 each, and the resultant backup sets were extremely fragmented. Plenty of unused space on the media, so what's going on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHutch Posted February 5, 2004 Report Share Posted February 5, 2004 Hi, Answers in order of appearance: 1) Not necessarily delete the backup, but more like disregards what files (unflags them) it backed up previously, and starts from scratch again. 2) Nope. You're going to have to either erase everything on the drive; get another hard disk; or start backing it up to a file (not as a set), depending on the total amount of files you intend to backup - max. is 2 terabytes in OS X, I believe, in order to start another backup set. 3) Well, if it backed up everything you asked it to, then it doesn't matter to Retrospect how much space is left on the disk, cos it uses the entire drive as one backup device, with your currect backup method. Hope this answers most of your queries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHutch Posted February 5, 2004 Report Share Posted February 5, 2004 Oops! You're not using OS X, it's Windows. Well whatever the max. file size it can handle, then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted February 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2004 More evidence that the problem is causeds by defragmentation by Retrospect on the backup drive: 1. In the past, when I've done a Recycle backup, I've noticed that the previous backup set was deleted prior to doing the backup. Indeed, this must occur if the same backup set is used. 2. I just did another Recycle bckup using the same drive on which I did the Recycle backup that took 13+hours, however, BEFORE, doing the backup, I did a defrag of the drive. This time the Recycle backup took 9:42 which is in line of what I would expect. 3. I also realized that these timing issues seem to have begun after the installation of RDU47.exe near the end of December 2003. Retrospect version is 6.5.336. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted February 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2004 "1) Not necessarily delete the backup, but more like disregards what files (unflags them) it backed up previously, and starts from scratch again." File systems do not work that way, be it Mac or otherwise. "2) Nope. You're going to have to either erase everything on the drive; get another hard disk; or start backing it up to a file (not as a set), depending on the total amount of files you intend to backup - max. is 2 terabytes in OS X, I believe, in order to start another backup set." Not the problem in this case. "3) Well, if it backed up everything you asked it to, then it doesn't matter to Retrospect how much space is left on the disk, cos it uses the entire drive as one backup device, with your currect backup method." Not relevant for a disk backup set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted March 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 14, 2004 Dantz has yet to respond to this thread. The problem is getting worse. I did Recycle backups on both USB hard drives (each has a different backup set) within the past few weeks. I've noticed that retrospects performance has worsened, so I decided to analyze each drive, expected to find a few fragmentation problems. Well, was I eve rastonished to find that, for both drives, te entire drive was shown in red, i.e. EVERYTHING is fragmented. Even te files recorded for the original recycle backup are fragmented, which makes no sense as retrospect wipes out the original backup set before creating the new copy. Such extreme fragmentation can occur only if retrospect is messing up its buffering before it writes te backup files IMHO, this problem became very noticeable in conjunction with RDU47, perhaps RDU45. The backup drives are USB hard drives connected to an Adaptec USB 2 card. The drivers for the USB card have not been changed since te card was installed last June and there are no driver updates. Others using a USB hard drive can likely see the same problem, if they do a defrag of the drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted March 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 15, 2004 Well, is misery loves company, I'm just as miserable as before, but happy I found another retrospect user experiencing the same defragmentation problem. Oh well, the red in the defrag screen at least matches the red in the dantz logo, so we at least have color co-ordination! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted March 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Is Dantz aware of any fixes to Win 2000 for USB drives that may have reduced defragmentation? I ran windoze update on 15 March 2004. Had not done so since Oct 2003. Defragmentation seems to be much lower the past few daze. I sure hope that I didn't jinx myself by posting this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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