Waiting for Media Error and first time setup in Retrospect Backup 6.5
Question:
Waiting for Media error during backups. In addition, initial setup is sometimes confusing.
Answer:
See below for recommendations for a simple repeating backup in Retrospect Backup using rotating media:
Make sure you’ve set the following in Retrospect:
Create 5 backup sets, one for each day of the week (if you’re backing up only on weekdays). Label your tapes Monday, Tuesday, etc. Add each tape to its appropriate backup set, depending on label. This will allow Retrospect to properly manage a five-day rotation.
All backups should be Recycle Backups - this means all tapes will be automatically overwritten.
In Retrospect Preferences -> Media -> Erasure, check ‘Automatically reuse named media’ and ‘Minimal erase confirmation’. This is also required for Retrospect to overwrite a backup tape automatically, without prompting.
In Retrospect Preferences -> Media -> Request, check ‘Media request timeout’ and enter a value (like 20 minutes). This will fix the ‘Waiting for Media Error’. By default, Retrospect waits indefinitely if a user hasn’t inserted the correct tape. This change enables the backup to ignore the problem after X minutes, and run the next backup as scheduled.
In Retrospect Preferences -> Media -> Request, check ‘Automatic skip to blank media’.
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