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error 206 anyone else?


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I am using the DVD/CD burner that came with my G5. I am burning backups to SONY CD-R 700MB CDs, and I can not get past the begining of the first verification of the multiple volume backup I am doing. The volumes are the Desktop and Document subvolumes.

 

My log is full of:

 

Bad backup set header found (0x15a70e86 at 2075).

 

and:

 

Trouble reading: “1-Backup Set A” (4294967290), error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, etc.).

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I have been experiencing the exact same problem, getting the error whenever Retrospect asks for new media. It does not appear to be related to what volumes/subvolumes are being backed up. At the moment, I do not see the problem using Imation media.

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  • 4 months later...

Now, I can not even get through one backup without a 206 error. I am using Retrospect Desktop 6.0.193 and driver version 5.7.104. Since I know from personal experience that a 206 error (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, etc.) can be due to a Retrospect bug (see above), I am frustrated. I suspect it may be due to another program running at the same time, which has been reported elsewhere in these forums to generate these errors. I have tried removing the "driver update", but that does not help.

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I too have these 206 errors. I'm backing up a subvolume - USERS on my main hard drive. I first did a successful backup to a second internal drive. I then did the exact same backup to a brand new LA Cie 250GB firewire drive. I ended up with 1871 execution errors during the compare stage. I'm using 6.0.193 and driver update 5.7. What is this?

 

My mom also had the same problems with a powerbook G4 and a la cie drive. Backs up fine, but the errors show up during compare and then locks up her computer. We are both running 10.3.4.

 

Screen saver not on, etc.

 

Sounds like a bug to me! Anyone else? These are both brand new firewire drives, properly formatted using disk utility. I've copied about 20gb of data in the finder and it works fine.

 

Any ideas would be great. I've got nothing running in the background either.

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I just tried changing the driver version from 5.7 to 5.3. Same thing happened.

 

I now changed the FW drive to an EZQuest. Backed up perfectly.

 

Is it possible to have a conflict with LaCie's FW HD firmware? It's a porsche FW400/250GB.

 

I did backup successfully to the la cie drive when it was 3gb or 5gb backups. Won't compare correctly for the 23.3gb backup of my users folder.

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Hi

 

Retrospect doesn't care what drive you use. It treats all hard disks the same no matter how they are connected to the machine. I suspect your other drive is a bit flaky. I've seen similar things happen before on drives that had a bad write cache.

 

Glad to hear the new drive is working!

 

Nate

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I checked the firmware on the 2 funky lacie drives. They are both the same. My brother in law also has the same drive but his works fine. He checked and he has different firmware. Can this make a difference? I guess it can. I'm going to call La Cie today.

 

Why do they work fine in the finder though?

 

sam

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Hi

 

Firmware affects how a drive functions and performs. If a bug in the firmware causes the drive to fail under heavy load it will affect your backups. In that respect firmware can make a difference. However, Retrospect is not even aware of the firmware version of the drive. It really shouldn't matter.

 

Nate

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been getting error 206 ever since 10.3.4/5 updates.

 

I'm using a SCSI SONY SDT-5000 DDS / Adaptec 2930CU SCSI Host Adapter. I've been given a million reasons why this shouldn't work anymore; and that it should never have worked in 10.2 or 10.3. I did my last major backup about 3 months ago and then about a week later and ever since I have only received error 206.

 

I got a new tape mechanism, and a new SCSI host adapter that's supposed to be MORE compatible. I've tried booting in OS 9 and attempting to access old OS 9 backups and still get 206 errors from the old and new mechanism. I've tried to access more than 50 different tapes all from different backup sequences and all I get are 206 errors. Even if I reinstall the SCSI card I'd been using from 2001 to 2003 without incident, right up to 10.2. I've been carrying out this form of backup since 1996.

 

I'm at my wit's end and I have tons of old archival data that I need to and can't access.

 

Retrospect --> this is some weird kind of archival backup system. When I called Retrospect the guys said, 'That's really too bad." Even if I had updated to newer equipment last year, I would still have to access old archival data from 1998-1999.

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I had been getting the error 206 messages for some time. I am using a Sony DRU500A drive. I had been using it in an external firewire enclosure for a couple of years. I would occasionally get the 206 error and I would simply put in a new DVD-R and the backup would proceed. It was fairly infrequent but might happen once or twice a week.

 

Just recently a couple of months after I upgraded to Retrospect Workgroup 6 the drive stopped responding at all. I pulled the drive from the External FW enclosure and plugged it into a PC via IDE and found that it worked fine there. I went ahead and updated the firmware to the latest available on the Sony website (2.1a I think) and it still worked fine. I then installed it internally in my G4 BW Tower using IDE. It was recognized by Retrospect but now I am getting almost constant 206 errors. Basically it will get all the way to the point of backing up a couple of hundred megabytes for a particular client and then it just gets stuck. Or I get the ubiquitous error 206.

 

I sure would like a resolution to this, just like everyone else in this thread! mad.gif

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Hi

 

So the drive worked fine with Retrospect 6.0 and then failed all of a sudden is that correct? What do you mean by "the drive stopped responding"?

 

When you tested the drive on your PC did you try it with Retrospect for Windows?

You might want to try running the drive configuration wizard with this drive. That will tell us if packet writing is not working properly. Have you tried a full uninstall/reinstall of Retrospect?

 

Thanks

nate

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I now get 203 & 206 errors on a brand new Dual G5 2.5 ghz when trying to do an incremental update to Verbatim 8x DVD-R media in the internal drive, a Pioneer DVR-107D (CD-RW/DVD-RW). The initial update went through without a hitch (other than being slow), but the incremental ruined the whole thing.

 

I am not a happy Retrospect user. They have never gotten OS X right, in my experience. When I do tape backups to a SCSI DAT4 tape drive, I have to use a machine that runs OS 10.1.5 in order for Retrospect (and often the system) not to hang somewhere during the backup.

 

What a mess!!

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I get lots of 206 errors when backing up to tape, and no errors when backing up to disk.

 

The problem started abruptly on June 23, 2004. I did not have time to troubleshoot it then, so I lived with the errors for a while, then started backing up the server to another disk (also on the server) instead of to tape. No errors reported when backing up to disk. Need to troubleshoot now, and get my tape backups working again.

 

The Setup:

XServe running Mac OS X Server v10.2.8

ATTO Express PCI UL3S-066 (Supported according to Dantz)

Sony SDT 9000 Tape Drive (Qualified by Dantz on both Macintosh and Windows)

Retrospect Workgroup v5.1.175 then updated to v5.1.177

RDU 4.2.105 then updated to 4.3.103

 

The Retrospect log shows three types of error that repeat multiple times. Below are typical:

 

Trouble reading: "1-Backup Set B" (153631), error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, ect.).

 

Trouble positioning: "1-Backup Set B" (153631), error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, ect.).

 

Bad backup set header found (0x39312e31 at 1,236,353).

 

I've used a tape cleaning cartridge, and re-tried the backup. Same errors. I've tried erasing the backup media and performing a recycle backup. Same errors. I've tried new media. Same errors.

 

Any suggestions?

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Hi

 

What drivers are you using for the Atto card? Make sure to get the latest from their website. Are there any other SCSI devices connected to the bus?

 

Chances are this is really just a SCSI communication problem. If you have another cable handy be sure to try it.

 

Thanks

Nate

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I finally was able to figure out my problem with a call in to live technical support. My drive, the Pioneer DVR-106D (apple), is supported, but only for DVD media according to http://www.dantz.com/hardware . Apparently CD-Rs are not supported. I tried a RiDATA DVD-R today, and it worked fine. Why CD-Rs worked before and not now, is anybody's guess.

 

I assume you get the same errors when you try a different brand of DVD media? Dantz apparently uses TDK media exclusively for their tests. Might want to give it a go with this gold standard frist.

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Hallelujah! I updated the driver for the ATTO SCSI card (Express PCI UL3S-066), and no more error 206!

 

Old Driver: v2.0.5

Old Flash: v1.6.6f0

 

New Driver: v2.1.2

New Flash: v1.6.6f0

 

Wish I had visited this forum sooner.

Wish error 206 was more descriptive. I got:

 

"error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, ect.)",

 

and believed either my media was bad/damaged or my tape drive had finally died. An improvement would be:

 

"error 206 (do not despair; this may be solved by updating the driver for your SCSI card)".

 

O.K. that's a little tongue in check, but just a little. Here's what error 206 ought to read:

 

"error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, out of date SCSI driver, etc.)"

 

Thanks for your help.

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I'm backing up to DVD+R. when I first began using the Trial version a month ago, I was getting many 206 errors. they went away, probably after updating the driver to '57'. however, after upgrading to the latest '58' driver, the 206 errors have come back with a vengence. almost every second DVD+R disc gets killed, usually after the leader is written but before any data gets written.

 

iMac 17" LCD 1GHz 1GB

Mac OS X 10.3.5

Pioneer DVR-107XLB 8x DVD RW ATAPI drive, installed internally.

Retrospect Desktop 6.0.193 with driver update 5.8.103

2 LaCie FireWire external drives:

  • one is 200GB and the other is 80GB.

  • they're on the same FireWire chain.

  • the 80GB drive is connected before the 200GB drive.

  • I'm backing up the 200GB drive.

  • the 80GB drive sometimes gets very busy with data read/written by other applications.

backing up 200GB of data takes a long time. this is one of the reasons I purchased my new 8x Pioneer DVR-A07XLB drive, because 8x is much faster than the 2x speed provided by the Apple-bundled DVR-105D drive. I'm also using 8x certified media to be sure to get the 8x speed.

 

but as I was saying, backing up takes a lot of time. I therefore usually run the backup in the background. in the foreground, I quite often watch an avi movie in a VLC window while either web browsing or working with an image scanning/processing application. my iMac certainly doesn't get off easy.

 

some things to consider:

  • is Retrospect having trouble communicating with the DVR drive?

  • does a busy 80GB drive affect communication between Retrospect and the 200GB drive?

  • is FireWire problematic and is it to blame rather than the DVR drive or Retrospect?

  • with packet writing, does Retrospect need to provide the packets in a timely manner? what happens if something interrupts or slows the communication of the packets to the DVR drive?

  • the Pioneeer 107D drive has been on the market for months. it's even bundled with apple's G5 PowerMacs. Dantz still hasn't qualified it though. is Dantz having difficulty maintaining stable and reliable communications with this drive?

  • the 206 error is too generic. it doesn't give us (or Dantz) enough information to work with.

more tidbits.

a few minutes ago, I loaded a blank DVD+R disc. Retrospect (apparently) wrote the leader and then rejected the disc with a 206 error. I replaced it with a new disc and everything proceeded ok. I then needed to insert another new disc. I inserted the error 206 disc in instead of a new blank disc and was surprised to see Retrospect accept it and write to it successfully. what's going on?

 

sometimes, Retrospect hangs during the backup. I can click Pause and Stop and Retrospect responds with the respective confirmation dialogs. if I chose to actually Stop the backup, Retrospect tries and fails to cancel the backup. it continues to hang. my only choice is to Force Quit the application. after force-quitting Retrospect, the DVR drive is unavailable to all other applications. if I relaunch Retrospect, even it cannot communicate to the drive. I have to restart the iMac to be able to use the DVR drive again.

 

Retrospect and DVD+R: far from perfect. I hope they make some real improvements in this arena soon. I paid for my upgrade yesterday after my trial time ran out. I wonder if I'm going to be forced to pay for yet another upgrade in 6 months time when Tiger is released. if Retrospect/DVD+R hasn't improved within that time, I'll take several cold showers before forking over the upgrade money. fyi, if the released version of Tiger includes the promised search-light functionality, I'll be upgrading to Tiger faster than you can blink.

 

 

regards

Gregory

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Check out http://www.dantz.com/hardware and you will notice that your drive is not qualified yet with the Mac OS. However, if you read about the drive being used with Windows, it says "Only DVD-R and DVD-RW media is supported with this drive". So, I would give DVD-R a go and see if that fixes the problem. I was able to use CD-Rs in my DVR-106 earlier, but now I can only use DVD-Rs (CD-Rs are not qualified - no idea why they worked before). The DVD-Rs seem to work flawlessly though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After installing version 6 on my Mac, I started to get 206 errors. So, I tried to switch back to version 5. Now version 5 also produces 206 errors. Neither DVD-Pro nor I-tunes have a problem writing DVD-Rs. Retrospect now fails 1/3 of the way through the disc, every time. There's a problem here and it isn't my hardware. What to do? Replace a drive that clearly isn't the problem? Switch from Retrospect, which I've found useful and trustworthy for probably a decade?

 

Google this, and you'll see that it's not a random problem:

macintosh retrospect drive error 206 "os x"

 

At the time this problem showed up, the host Mac was running as it came in the box from Apple, so blaming third party hardware isn't the answer.

 

PowerMac G4 2x1.42Ghz/512mb

OS X 10.3.5

Pioneer DVDR 105

 

Eric

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  • 2 weeks later...

Spoke (way) too soon. I thought my problem was solved (back on October 3). Retrospect ran without posting an error 206 on October 3, 4, 5, and 6, but the error 206 came back on October 7. I have not been able to run a backup to tape without an error 206 (and Retrospect stalling) since then. I've tried brand new tape media. Still get error 206. I can run a backup to hard disk with no errors, but really need to backup to tape, not hard disks. From reading other posts on this tread, it seems that error 206 is a Retrospect bug. My tape drive (Sony SDT 9000) is "qualified" according to Dantz. My SCSI card (ATTO Express PCI UL3S-066) is supported according to Dantz. I'm using the latest SCSI driver (v2.1.2) according to ATTO.

 

What's going on? Any help appreciated.

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