Dantz working on Retrospect DVD-RAM problem

Posters to Dantz' discussion board and MacFixIt readers have reported problems backing up to DVD-RAM media after applying the Mac OS X 10.2.3 update. After discussion with Dantz' technical support department, it seems that the problem has existed since the initial release of Mac OS X 10.2, but has simply cropped up for users with the incremental updates.

Some users report an error number 102 when attempting to write to DVD-RAM media, while others report that the operation simply stalls after a partial transfer. Still others report extremely slow transfer times. One reader writes:

"I am able to format, erase, and rename the DVD-RAM disks I am using with Apple's Disk Utility. The problem is once I begin Retrospect, it tries to erase the disk itself, then I receive the message. It does not matter if I start Retrospect after formatting the disk or not."

A technical support representative from Dantz offers some insight on the issue, and says the firm is actively investigating:

"We are actively investigating issues with 10.2.x and spanning media with DVD-RAM drives. When spanning, the disk does not become available to Retrospect. There is no other information available at this time, however updates will be posted to the forum as they become available."

Ken Shrick offers a limited solution that still requires the users to split data into 2 GB or smaller segments:

" Try erasing the DVD-RAM in OS X's Disk Utility with the volume format set to Mac OS Standard. This will show as HFS format instead of HFS . This allowed me to get Retrospect 5.0.238 to start a backup. I was getting the 102 error when I had the DVD-RAM formatted to Mac OS Extended (HFS ). When I had one side of my DVD-RAM disk full and Retrospect asked for more media, Retrospect would not recognize a mounted DVD-RAM disk. Backup Sets will not span multiple DVD-RAM disks. For now, looks like I have to split my backups in 2GB chunks."

Feedback on this issue? Drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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