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TICKET ARCHIVE -> AIT Tape Drive not detected

toobe - Feb 10, 2006 - 12:11 pm

I have become a fill in IT guy by default at my workplace, and I know very little to nothing about this subject. Here's the situation: we have an AIT Drive Unit that we used to use for backups. For whatever reason, our IT guy stopped doing bakups a few months ago, and now I'm trying to get them going again. The drive is a Sony SDX-D400C, the computer we're trying to run it off of is a Mac G3 running OS 10.3.9. The drive fires up just fine, and when it's connected to the computer, the appropriate light turns red. But the G3 is not recognizing the drive or allowing me to access it... any ideas?

Khama - Feb 11, 2006 - 1:50 am

How are you trying to access it? With what application / utility?

What are you using for backups? (what program, or are you attempting to do manual back up?)

Just trying to backup the machine where the AIT drive is?

How much data you backing up?

What type of backup schedule? When, what each time, and how often.

Recycling the tapes, how many in the rotation?

Overwriting each backup, or doing incremental?

Backup solutions need to be thoroughly thought out. after all, its only your data. Could the company survive if they lost the data for good? How about for 2 -3 weeks?

I just helped an advertising agency recover from 400GB's of data loss due to a crash. Took over 2 weeks and is still inching along. The company has now spent over 65 hours tech time, 3 days complete shutdown, 2 weeks now without most of the files, and lost over 30,000 in revenue easy. Not to mention the embarrassment to their clients, as they are having to ask for duplicate files, or files back that they had sent previously to the clients.

I recommend Dantz Retrospect for backups on the Mac. I have been using it for over 10 years, and over 2 dozen clients. I have never lost a file and not been able to recover in a matter of hours with Retrospect. I swear by it for Macintosh backup. No product I have used, tested, tried, or reviewed has come close to the reliability and simplicity of Retrospect. (And no, I dont work for Dantz ... lol)

I await your response to my questions.

toobe - Feb 13, 2006 - 12:19 pm

We are using Dantz Retrospect. There are already scripts set up to run once a week doing backups of all the computers on the network (the clients are already installed). We are rotating between three different tapes on a weekly basis. It has worked in the past with no issues, but for some reason that no one knows, our old IT guy didn't have it running over the last few months. Everything is in place and reasy to go, all I need is for the drive to be detected...and it won't work!

Khama - Feb 13, 2006 - 5:58 pm

Please do a version check on your Retrospect for me?

I bet you only are running 6.0

http://www.emcinsignia.com/supportupdates/updates/

Make sure you have downloaded and installed the latest update.

I myself was working on a client about 6 months ago, with a G4 server, and a USB Sony AIT drive. Retrospect would not use the drive, until I installed the update patch.

Let me know if that help or not. If not I will try and assist you further. ( I am quite familliar with Retrospect )

If we do need further assistance, is Remote Assistance an option? ( Do you have ports open on the router and ARD client 2.2 ? )