STRANGE MEZZO BEHAVIOR...(long)

[john a]

Twice in recent months a strange thing has happened to me when backing up an album project to Mezzo. I'm just dragging Mac folders to the Archive section of the main Mezzo window. I then continue to back up dynamically as the project grows. These two projects both grew to be about 16 gig in size. Normally no problem for Mezzo=in these cases however mezzo claimed to have backed up 16-17 gig of data to one DDS3 tape 9 wich can hold only twelve). The first time I was truly mstified, and I sent one of the duplicate backup tapes to Monica at GMR- she was unable
to effectively restore the files. which, of course means I didn't really back up this persons album. Well yesterday I finished a 13 song project and also finishd the backup-once again Mezzo claims to have put 15+ gig on a 12gig tape. I realized then that one thing these two sessions had in common is that they were uploaded from ADATs and therefore were exclusively 48k files. This strange behavior has never happened with 44k files or smallish 48 k sessions mixed in a dynamic backup with 44.1s. Anyone else have any like experiences with Mezzo and 48k backup? The mezzo folks don't have a suggestion at this point. Atyhough this time i haven't cleared the drive yet, so I can just split the work into two foldsers, each less then 12 gig and back them up separately (let's see that will take, yup the usual big chunk out of Saturday). Any input would be appreciated.

John A

[Jim Morris]

John--
We never had THAT problem with MEZZO, but we had plenty with missing files and corrupt sessions after restoring. GMR people have never given any serious attention to our difficulties and have always looked for "the other guy" as the problem. We switched to Retrospect and it has been totally bulletproof. We use AIT drives and we backup each session every night due to the nature of our session scheduling. We spent thousands of $$$ on Mezzo and now just use it as an emergency system in the background (Retro doesn't run that way). We spent probably $200- $300 on Retro.

I really wish GMR cared about their customers, but I'm afraid they don't give a rats @@s.

Good Luck

Jim Morris

[meshtheflesh]

I am pretty much ready to ditch Mezzo. We too have spend thousands on it. It works great when it does. Retrospect sounds simplier and more solid.
One question to Jim, do you back up multiple computers accross the network, or are your on individual machines? Also, do you do A & B backups?

Thanks

Ramesh.
www.songzu.com

[Magnetic]

It sounds like it could be a drive problem....are you using Mezzo's verify? If not, your drive could be happily accepting digits, and not writing them to tape! Most drives have read-after-write verification, but taking the time for a second pass to verify is the only way to go, no matter whose software you use.

Are you dragging the Session Document to Mezzo and letting it creative a targeted archive, or are you just backing up the folders? If the latter, you're missing out on Mezzo's greatest strength, which is to keep track of all the files in your session, regardless of where they are.

BTW, I've used Mezzo since version 1.x, on three systems, backing up 44.1 and 48K ProTools sessions with zero difficulties.

[Danny Caccavo]

A suggestion - set the verify to "full verify".

Also, with more and more drives automatically having compression enabled, you can end up with more than 12gb on a 12gb (native) tape. We get this all the time with DDS-2. I've gotten up to 7 gig on a 4 gig (native) tape.

I've never used DDS-3 - is it 12 gig native, or am I just wrong about this...

dc

[john a]

Let's see...

I'm definitely using the verify function-but I've not investigated "full" verify. The DDS3 tapes (which are 12 gig uncompressed) in question claim to have backed up and verified
16 gig of data on 12 gig tapes- there is no compression enabled. And I am doing two tapes at once -a backup and a Mezzo copy (which is really just another independently written backup tied to the first). They both do the same thing. I routinely have backups that extend to 4 or 6 sets of tapes (we organize advertising work in monthly backups- September's backup might be 60-75 gig total. There are some Avid-originated TV sessions in these backups that are 48k-never a problem, the tapoes kick out at 11-12G and Mezzo asks for another. Only time this phantom backup thing has occurred is with these two backups that are completely 48k files. Other multiple tape backups are ongoing with the same drives, same computers, same network, same Mezzo- no problems at all.
I'd love to be abe to ditch Mezzo- but I haven't found anything else that will do dynamic, unattended backups over a network.

[Jim Morris]

Ramesh--
We use table-top drive enclosures for all our sessions (2 Cheetahs each) and do all of our Retrospect archiving offline on a different Mac in a dedicated room. We also use that system to do our Retrospect restores. The Mezzo use has dwindled to just running it in the background during the actual session. Our PT rigs are NOT networked currently. We just carry the drives around from room to room as if they were 2" tapes. For us that has been the best use of resources. I'm not sure what we would gain by doing the network thing, but I'm sure there are plenty of folks on this group who could tell me. (hint hint)

Jim Morris

[meshtheflesh]

Jim,
We have recently put in 100baseT ethernet cards, and they are great, we can transfer things between computers at around 3 meg a second. We keep our sound FX library on one drive, and we can audition over the ethernet. I was thinking that i could back all the computers over the network every night, everyone just leaves there computers on.

cheers

Ramesh
www.songzu.com

[houser]

Mezzo allways stirs up a thread of love and hate, as back-up is a delicate thing...
In fact its-not back-up it's real actual
archiving with no other existing copies of th e work.
We have used mezzo since it was launched and as much as it sucks with crashing and stuff
it's the only thing that works for us.
Mezzo can read and write to many drives at once so we use it on a fibrechannel system
with 4 DDS3 drives to do combinations of backup
and restores. ALl BUs are done in pairs to two
tapes at once.

I really wish GMR would do a serious update
to handle multiple sessions without having to eject tapes whenever you make a change.
The "fixing catalog" function is not reliable and takes forever..
Mezzo is very finicky when handling tapes that were in the drive when the CPU crashed.
therefor it really only works on a dedicated CPU IMHO.
Buggy, finicky but still the only thing that works for this. We have head very few real data-loss situations but I wish I could say none...

regards
Janne Anderson

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[Danny Caccavo]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">quote:<HR>Originally posted by john a:
<snip>-once again Mezzo claims to have put 15+ gig on a 12gig tape. <snip>
John A<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I became alarmed when I started using Sony SDT-7000 drives with Mezzo a few years ago - I'd get 4500mb on a 120, when Mezzo wasn't enabling compression.

Turns out that the Sony (and other) drives have the compression on. I think that's what's happening to you.

The lower levels you have on your sound files, the more it compresses(less bits are used)

dc