Retrospect backup, Protools and Apple Macs

[Noisyjon]

Hello All,

Back in 2000/2001 my band recorded an EP on a MAC based Protools rig that was backed up/saved to 4 CD-R's and handed over to us at the end of the session.
On the back of the each sleeve the Guy wrote - Retrospect backup disc 1/2/3/4

When I put the first disc in my MAC it doesn't even recognize the CD-R at all just asking to ignore or eject the CD.
I found and downloaded Retrospect for MAC but just don't know what to do with it to see if it'll read the CD-R's. It certainly doesn't seem to be obvious.

Is there a way to read the discs and open the files to get the audio tracks out do you know?
Any BC'ers in London that may be able to extract the audio files/tracks for me to load into Logic?

Any help much appreciated,
Cheers,
Jon.


I

Edited May 20, 2010 by jonthebass

[ShergoldSnickers]

[quote name='jonthebass' post='843688' date='May 20 2010, 11:32 PM']Hello All,

Back in 2000/2001 my band recorded an EP on a MAC based Protools rig that was backed up/saved to 4 CD-R's and handed over to us at the end of the session.
On the back of the each sleeve the Guy wrote - Retrospect backup disc 1/2/3/4

When I put the first disc in my MAC it doesn't even recognize the CD-R at all just asking to ignore or eject the CD.
I found and downloaded Retrospect for MAC but just don't know what to do with it to see if it'll read the CD-R's. It certainly doesn't seem to be obvious.

Is there a way to read the discs and open the files to get the audio tracks out do you know?
Any BC'ers in London that may be able to extract the audio files/tracks for me to load into Logic?

Any help much appreciated,
Cheers,
Jon.


I[/quote]
The problem here is teasing out where any fault may lie:

The CDs may have 'gone bad'.
CDs burned in one drive are sometimes unreadable in another - rare but it does happen.
Then there's the proprietary Retrospect file format that the data is saved in.

We'll assume for now that Retrospect is required to read the CDs and that they haven't become corrupt.

Somewhere in Retrospect (been a long time since I used it) is the facility for repairing or rebuilding the Retrospect catalogue file - this gives Retrospect the info about which files are in the backup and where to access them, ie which disk. It may be worth trying this option and then mounting the first CD to see if Retrospect can read it. If so, you can save the rebuilt catalogue file to your hard disk, and go through the rebuild procedure. It should ask if there are any more disks in the backup set when the first is done.

It is some time since I used Retrospect so I'm a bit hazy about this. Worth a try though! Good luck Jon.

Edit: Forgot to mention - once the catalogue file is rebuild and saved you still need to restore the data to your hard disk. There's a button for doing that in Retrospect somewhere!

Snicks.

Edited May 21, 2010 by ShergoldSnickers

[crez5150]

I would agree with Snicks..... The Mac should read the disks.... I've worked on Retrospect files before with no read issues in OS9 and OSX so I would agree that the disks may have degraded for some reason.

Hope you get it sorted

J