Retrospect 6.0 Desktop Mac

List Price: $99.99 Discount Price: $86.99

Features:

• Complete protection for networked computers
• Designed for use in home and small offices
• Fast backups with 100-percent accurate restores
• Proven automated technology provides easy administration
• Intuitive, user-friendly graphical user interface

Customer Reviews:

One star is too good for Retrospect [Posted on 2007-03-04]
Before upgrading to MAC OS 10.4 I used the convoluted "help" system with EMC and was told my backed up information would be fine but that I might need to install an updated driver to make Retrospect compliant with the upgraded OS. Turns out this "updated driver" is a complete software purchase to the tune of $89.00.

My backups are stored in a format only readable by Retrospect. If they hadn't lied to me in the first place I would have simply opened and saved my backups in a readable format before doing the upgrade. They have me over a barrel and offer no apologies.

it works [Posted on 2007-03-30]
I've been using Retrospect since day #1, maybe for 20+ years. I forgot what it used to be called in the good old days. I never liked it and it used to have quite a few bugs, glitches, and user interface issues. It still does.

So why did I give it 5 stars? Because it works as long as the user is sufficiently sophisticated to overcome Retrospect's numerous shortcomings.

One could argue that a sophisticated user could also use the provided unix tools to automate the same jobs. This is almost true except that the built-in unix tools themselves have bugs and glitches. E.g., resource forks are ignored by cpio and zip. Even rsync has a serious timestamp related bug. I was told that tar works with resource forks and my experiments seem to support that claim.

Why does it work?

For instance, I just used Retrospect to copy my huge and very personalized OS X 10.4.9 system disk from A to B and started to use B instead of A as the start up disk. The copy job was perfect, including ownership, timestamp, and permission issues.

For instance, after proper scripting, Retrospect does perfect incremental backup and also duplication of all my essential hard disks.

NOTE. Be prepared to be milked on a regular basis. It keeps getting fixed and you keep paying for the fixes.

Avoid like the plague [Posted on 2007-04-15]
After laboring for a long time to set up a backup server, I get a kernal panic (probably not R's fault) but -- OH JOY -- the crash corrupted the config file so NOW I GET TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

This is the first time I've seen it, but it's the single most frustrating failing of the program I've encountered so far. Another fun one is when a TOC file for a certain backup gets out of sync, so the program SHOWS YOU A DIALOGUE BOX ABOUT THIS AND DOES NOT EXECUTE ANY BACKUPS WHILE THIS IS SHOWING. There's no way to make it automatically fix the problem, which it could do. There's no Applescript support so you can't check to see if it's in a stopped state or anything. There's no way to stop the constant corrupting of the TOC files. I am an experienced user and have had nothing but problems with this pgoram. Since it has *no* future on the Mac (the company is not working on an Intel version), and since "schizo" is the only way to describe the engineers who made this program, you should NOT buy this program unless you know what it is (a full featured backup took for Mac and PC, but a crappy one). .

User Interface not for amateurs [Posted on 2007-06-23]
The user interface is the least intuitive I have ever used. The software does backup nicely, and reliably, once you have taken the time to understand the product. However, if you are not a professional or a dedicated hobbyist you will not enjoy, respect, or trust the user interface.

If you are using this in a small office then you will have incentive to learn how to configure this and your time will be rewarded. However my suggetion is that it not be purchased for home use. I'm an engineer and I have to think way too hard each time I need to backup a different configuration with this product.

Not for the superficial [Posted on 2008-03-11]
This is a very tough product to review and give advice on. First of all, I have been using Macs since 1988 and Retrospect since the early 1990s. At one time, I would have given it 5 stars plus. Now, I give it 3. Considering it's more or less the same product, why the downgrade? Well, time marches on and Retrospect has not kept up.

OTOH, it's important to be fair:

- Poor customer service support plan as other have pointed out, but that is true of most every other software I own, so I don't know if I can single out Retrospect.

- Complicated interface. Yes, true. But if long-time users such as myself know the program inside and out, would changing it benefit or harm us? A compete re-vamp (AND IMPROVEMENT) is hard to do. Although the interface is complicated, IT IS VERY POWERFUL once you get used to it. There is basically nothing you can't do by way of backups with Retrospect.

- Comparisons to programs that do clones is futile. There are any number of ways to do clones. Extensive incremental back ups via scripts, timed scripts, network back ups, backing up to all sorts of arcane media, etc, that is where Retrospect shines, and only programs that can do the same should be included for comparison.

- Proprietary files are a negative but I have never failed to retrieve files from back ups with Retrospect. This includes really old incremental files when something bizarre and serious has gone wrong. That's the main reason that Retrospect is still my BU program of choice.

Retrospect is a complete back up solution. It will clone your disk to boot-able external HD. It will do incremental back ups to a HD, tape, DVD, network, etc. If you are not doing incremental back ups, you are not backing up, you are only playing at it. It will give a zillion options of how do stuff and what files to back up. This all means that there is a measure complexity needed in the user interface. No way around that.

So why 3 stars instead of 5? Retrospect sometimes has problems with removable media and this causes headaches and sometimes toasted DVDs. The program feels neglected and a bit rough around the edges. I would love to see the incremental back ups done as normal files that I don't have to restore from Retrospect (typical finder/window interface on a Mac that does not have Retrospect installed). Ultimately, these negative may cause me to switch to a another system (time machine + cloner, or another back up program altogether) but in the meantime, Retrospect keeps plugging along and backing up my files.

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