Retrospect 6.0 Desktop Mac

Rating:
Summary: Very powerful/reliable but slow and not intuitive
Review: Dantz Retrospect 6.0 is an industrial grade product. From what I can tell it's nicely implemented when it comes to supporting backups in a "heavy" environment.

For my use on my G4 Mac (dual 825 Mhz processors w/1 GByte of ram) I find it pretty hard to use.

For example, to backup files from a single directory, you have to choose the "Source" but that only let's you choose a source disk or create a "Volume" that only seems to be able to contain a whole disk. There's no option to directly specify a directory as the backup "Source". There's no screen specific help button on the screens where these terms are mentioned.

To backup an individual directory, it looks like you have to specify a "Selecting" option separate from the "Source" option where the "Selecting" option let's you specify substring to match against filenames/directoris when looking at the "Source". Again there's no screen specific help button in the "Selecting" screen.

I'm trying to backup the files in a singe directory right now, but Retrospect seems to be scanning all files and folders on my Mac. I'm actually writing this review while waiting for Dantz to scan my whole hard drive.

This seems brain damaged. I suspect I'm doing something wrong. So I'll go read the manual and figure it out, but that's exactly the problem. You have to read the manual to use this product.

I'm also curious about why Retrospect has to scan each file on the whole hard disk *before* starting the backup. When finishing a whole disk backup it spends something like a half hour "closing files" (after files have already been backed up and verified on my 60 Gbyte disk with 15 Gbytes of space used).

Rating:
Summary: Very powerful/reliable but slow and not intuitive
Review: Dantz Retrospect 6.0 is an industrial grade product. From what I can tell it's nicely implemented when it comes to supporting backups in a "heavy" environment.

For my use on my G4 Mac (dual 825 Mhz processors w/1 GByte of ram) I find it pretty hard to use.

For example, to backup files from a single directory, you have to choose the "Source" but that only let's you choose a source disk or create a "Volume" that only seems to be able to contain a whole disk. There's no option to directly specify a directory as the backup "Source". There's no screen specific help button on the screens where these terms are mentioned.

To backup an individual directory, it looks like you have to specify a "Selecting" option separate from the "Source" option where the "Selecting" option let's you specify substring to match against filenames/directoris when looking at the "Source". Again there's no screen specific help button in the "Selecting" screen.

I'm trying to backup the files in a singe directory right now, but Retrospect seems to be scanning all files and folders on my Mac. I'm actually writing this review while waiting for Dantz to scan my whole hard drive.

This seems brain damaged. I suspect I'm doing something wrong. So I'll go read the manual and figure it out, but that's exactly the problem. You have to read the manual to use this product.

I'm also curious about why Retrospect has to scan each file on the whole hard disk *before* starting the backup. When finishing a whole disk backup it spends something like a half hour "closing files" (after files have already been backed up and verified on my 60 Gbyte disk with 15 Gbytes of space used).

Rating:
Summary: Retrospect wants you to buy expensive support and for what?
Review: I use to swear by retrospect and it never let me down until OS X. Since Dantz started to support OS X its been "You can purchase Retrospect Support, for $xxx a year...." and how good is this support? Not very I have a very common DVDR Drive that they still don't support, I wouldn't complain if I owned the express back up, but I own the Pro package and the support is lousy! so many $$$ a call to find out that I need to update to their new software after I had just purchased an upgrade and then they still can't say they know if they support a Pioneer A107 DVDR!? $150 plus a year for support I don't think so..

Rating:
Summary: It's not easy to use.
Review: Like other reviewers, I used to swear by Dantz backup software. I used its DiskFit for years. When I upgraded to OS X, I got Dantz's Retrospect and have had a fair number of problems.

1. Dantz gives you one free tech call in the first 30 days and then charges like $70 if you have a problem after that. I think they should give you one free tech call ANYTIME. Most users won't have a problem in the first 30 days -- and when you have a problem after your first hard-drive disaster, getting hit for $70 just adds insult to injury.

2. In order to use an external hard-drive as a backup location, you've got to select this option inside a couple of screens in preferences. This should be the default, especially since this is the favored way of backing up an entire internal hard drive. And even if you've selected it in preferences, if you crash and have to restore from the original CD, you've got to remember this minor selection or your restore won't work, causing much panic as I found out.

3. The program has behaved differently with different backups, causing confusion. For months it performed the backup simply to my external hard drive, then one day it required that my external hard drive be erased to do the backup.

4. When I did experience a problem that required a restore, the program crashed AFTER erasing my hard drive but BEFORE restoring anything. This was distressful.

5. I've had to use the manual many times in my backups because the program simply isn't intuitive.

I give it two stars because I was actually able to restore my data and the thing grudgingly does its job. But, man, I wish it worked more simply for the average user who doesn't give a darn about scripting and network backups.

Rating:
Summary: Total Dung
Review: Loved Retrospect when it first came out. I've used this version on 3 different computers. Some with freshly formatted source and destination drives. Never completes without errors that render the backup sets unusable. If you buy it make sure you suspect Retrospect first and not waste your valuable 30 days free support working on the drives as I did.

Rating:
Summary: Unpleasant to use
Review: Nobody would give the authors of this software an ease-of-use award. From the outset it behaves as if it were written to please IT specialists and others whose careers depend on things being complicated and incomprehensible to mortals. Even when Retrospect is being directed to do something simple, it is not simple to do because it speaks some alien jargon. It could really serve as a model for bad interface design.

It isn't much discussed, but the Mac is really lacking quality tools for backup, file synchronization, and similar critical tasks.

Rating:
Summary: Best there is!
Review: Why the low ratings? I have used this for back-ups for years and it's just flat out the best there is for back-up. Do these "other users" really back-up? It's really simple and does it all.