However, when I immediately started a full backup onto that same drive using another Memorex 16x blank DVD-R (the first one having been written by the configuration process), Retrospect said the media was "unknown". The process took about 20 minutes of writing and reading, and ended with a Retrospect message that the custom configuration was created successfully.
Edit to make it clear that the owner of Retrospect, rather than the Retrospect program itself, writes its own drivers.īut, PeterN, a week ago Saturday I _did_ remove the Retrospect Driver Update file from the Retrospect 6.1 folder, and then created a custom configuration for my friend's drive using a Memorex 16x blank DVD-R.
P.S.: I've posted this here, rather than on the Mac forum, to allow greater scrutiny by DVD mavens. So what do you think is the problem? Do DVD drives that are not rated for 16x burning go bonkers when one puts 16x blank DVD-Rs into them? Are Memorex blank DVD-Rs simply inadequate compared to HP or Verbatim ones? Is it reasonable that my friend's FireWire cable (which sits quietly on his physical desk) would go bad simultaneously with his putting Memorex 16x blank DVD-Rs into his drive? I think I've switched everything hardware/firmware/software-wise except change his FireWire cable (mine was too much of a nuisance to detach quickly, and I don't have an extra at home). His drive uses a TSSTCorp (Samsung) SH-162L LightScribe mechanism (he doesn't use LightScribe, having tried it once), while mine uses an NEC non-LightScribe mechanism. Last Saturday I brought over an old Verbatim 8x blank DVD-R I had found at home, and successfully ran an incremental backup of his eMac. Those DVD-Rs were from a stack of HP 8x, which I had suggested he order when he wanted to use his favorite online office supplier. I then successfully recreated the Retrospect catalog (which had been programmatically trashed when the complete "recycle" backup started running a week before) from those disks using my drive. Last Wednesday I got my friend to dig out his previous set of backup disks from the wastebasket. The results using his drive were even worse. I then changed the backup option to include Compare, reran the complete backup on my drive, and also got unsatisfactory results: The backup asked for new blank DVDs before the previous ones should have been filled,the Retrospect log showed this was caused by a write problem on each DVD, and the compare slowed to a crawl because of many read errors before I told it to quit.
I downloaded a newer version of Retrospect 6 (which is only supposed to have been enhanced to handle a new version of the remote client-which he doesn't use), updated both our drives' firmware to the latest available (mine was up to date), and created a new Retrospect profile (Dantz/EMC does its own drivers for Retrospect) for his drive. The following Saturday night I brought over my own old LaCie d2 FireWire external drive-purchased a few months before his-as well as a new batch of Memorex 16x DVD-Rs also purchased at Tekserve (where the salesman said they had not had any complaints). Since I was still at his apartment I investigated, and found that at least DVDs #2 through #4 hadn't been written successfully-even thought Retrospect hadn't indicated that anything was wrong with the backup. Two weeks ago, after he did a complete backup for which blank DVDs #2 through #4 were Memorex 16x DVD-Rs I had just bought for him, he noticed that DVD #4 wasn't automatically mounted onto his desktop after Retrospect quit. The backups have been running fine for years, with a complete backup scheduled once every 18 weeks and an incremental backup on the other weeks. I have my friend's PPC eMac set up to do weekly backups with Retrospect 6 onto single-layer DVD-Rs, using his 2005-era LaCie d2 FireWire external drive.