Retrospect 6 performance issue with "duplicate" function

MacFixIt reader Lance Diernback reports an issue, apparently confirmed by Dantz, that affects performance when using Retrospect 6's "duplicate" feature. If you use the duplicate feature and thought Retrospect was freezing, this report may be helpful, as it indicates that the issue may simply be very slow performance. Lance writes:

"I 'duplicate' my Mac to an external FireWire HD. The very first full duplicate went fine. When I tried subsequent 'update' [duplicate operations] I ran into the problem. Retrospect would complete the 'copying' cycle, start the 'closing' cycle, and then apparently hang in a loop, not completing the closing, nor getting to the compare cycle. The first time this happened, I let Retrospect run for an hour or more after it hung before I did a force quit.

"I spoke to Dantz technical support about this. Their immediate suggestion was to let Retrospect run overnight to see if, in fact, it successfully completed the duplicate. To my surprise, it did just that, taking over 7 hours in total. In other words, it wasn't hanging at all but just taking an extraordinary amount of time to complete. At Dantz's request, I ran a couple more duplicate cycles under different conditions and consistently repeated the problem. Dantz concluded that it's an issue with how Retrospect deals with permissions under OS X when running the duplicate function. There doesn't seem to be a problem with the duplicate files on the target disk. I've sampled a number of [the backups] and they seem OK so this appears like it's a performance issue rather than one of data integrity.

"The workaround is letting Retrospect run as long as it takes for the duplicate to complete. Since running Retrospect is usually the last thing I do before shutting down, I just let it run overnight. For some users, that might not be convenient however. Dantz says they've recognized this as a known issue and to stay tuned for a solution."

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