More Retrospect woes

[Guest theeldergeek]

No changes were made to the xserve, except putting an alternative time server in, but when I started Retrospect up this morning to check my backups had run last night, yet again, the software had corrupted and all my configuration was shot to pieces.

 

My advice is to avoid this software and find something else. It really is pants, support is non-existent, the forums are time consuming to navigate - overall, the whole thing is cr4p.

 

I'm feeling like a dead dog this morning - headache, shivers, cough that is doing my head in, maybe I'm just having a bad day?

[DMcCoy]

It's not just you. Retrospect is quite awful on the Mac. I switched to Bru quite quickly, which was also flawed, but certainly not as bad as retrospect. And it was quite a lot faster too.

[Guest theeldergeek]

It's not just you. Retrospect is quite awful on the Mac. I switched to Bru quite quickly, which was also flawed, but certainly not as bad as retrospect. And it was quite a lot faster too.

 

Well, I'm resigned to the fact I'm going to have to do this every so often I guess. It doesn't take long to set it all up, I guess, but so annoying.

 

Will see if I can check out "Bru", not heard of that one.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

@theeldergeek

 

Here are some others you may not have heard of:

 

http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.htm

BakBone Software - Products

Atempo - Data Management, Simplified. - Atempo Time Navigator

CrashPlan - Automatic Online Backup for Home, Business and Enterprise

ARCHIWARE :: Software zur Sicherung, Verteilung und Archivierung von Daten

 

And as already mentioned BRU. Some or all of these may not be to your taste or budget. Some or all of these will (sooner or later) require some command line interaction. You could however forego any or all of these and use what's built-in. Yes! There are backup utilities built-in and have been since 10.3! Command line utilities such as ditto and rsync (even asr at a pinch) can be easily scripted and defined as a scheduled service using launchd or cron. Depending on the OS cron may not be an option. You can even define an option that sends an email (to a desired address) on successful completion.

 

A tutorial on how to use rsync here:

 

Everything Linux - A Tutorial on Using Rsync

 

Launchd:

 

Getting Started with launchd

launchd

 

If the command line is not to your taste there are GUI alternatives. Lingon for launchd and for rsync:

 

arRsync – an Rsync GUI for Mac OS X : Bart Busschots

 

Or Google some yourself? Retrospect 8 is actually not too bad once you figure out how it works. IMO it's a better prospect than previous versions. The problem I have (and have always had) with Retrospect is how p***poor it is at recovering data when disaster strikes. Too many times recovered data is unusable. Not what you really want is it?

 

HTH?

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

Edited March 23, 2010 by AntonioRocco

[Dos_Box]

Thats a shame as Retrospect for Windows is actually a very good product. Both Ric and I use(d) it with no problems at all. The proactive backup function is an amazing feature which saves scheduling tasks and ensures that backups, especially disk to disk, are as up to date as possible. Edited March 23, 2010 by Dos_Box

[GrumbleDook]

RSync ... RSync is your friend.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

@Dos_Box

 

I agree. Retrospect for Windows (superficially similar but actually slightly different) is a much better product. The reliability and some of the functionality is not there in the Mac version. It's never let me down on a recover either.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[Guest theeldergeek]

RSync ... RSync is your friend.

 

Yes, sounds good, and I like the sound of a GUI version (I don't do command line or script very well at all!) but does anyone know if it backs up to an external tape drive as opposed to a hard drive?