[G4] Dantz Retrospect

[Snoke Jay S NPRI]

I couldn't have said it any better myself, Joe.  You hit all the salient points square and fair.
Jay Snoke

> ----------
> From: 	Joseph B. Gurman
> Reply To: 	Power Macintosh G4 List
> Sent: 	Wednesday, January 21, 2004 8:39 AM
> To: 	Power Macintosh G4 List
> Subject: 	Re: [G4] Dantz Retrospect
> 
>      Lots of comments here....
> 
> Alex wrote:
> >  > I'm reading the manual for this backup software and finding it cryptic.
> >
> >I don't see anything particularly cryptic about it.
> >
> >>  All I want to do is make monthly backups of my whole hard drive [...]
> >
> >All I want to do is drive to the supermarket and get the groceries.
> >Can't do it without learning to drive...
> 
>      It may not have been meant that way, but this just comes off 
> sounding more than a bit snottty. I had performed backups for years 
> on Digital OpenVMS systems before I started using Retrospect ten 
> years or so ago, and the documentation was as impenetrable to me then 
> as it is lucid now --- it all depends on your experience. (In my 
> case, familiar terms were used in an unfamiliar, and even 
> counterintuitive way....since, as Sir Peter Medawar once put it, "All 
> intuition is based on experience.") If you have none, the 
> documentation may be so much gibberish.
> 
> Alex also wrote:
> 
> >If SilverKeeper works for you, great -- it's free. (It's available for
> >download at <http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/>.) But Retrospect is in
> >a different class altogether.
> 
>      Agreed; absolutely.
> 
> Daniel Brieck wrote:
> 
> >Maybe something else is a better choice than Dantz retrospect? It
> >starts like this you buy the Retrospect software which works well, then
> >you update mac os x and retrospect is now slightly broken. Now it is
> >time  to spend $59.00 ( for Example I bought  5.1 update in July 2003)
> >for an upgrade to get back to full functionality. This seems to repeat
> >itself every 6 months Now since i have panther 10.3 I have to yet again
> >upgrade to the so call 6.0 version to get panther... This is plain
> >ridiculous and I don't think I am going to waste my money on the Dantz
> >software. I don't know if this all Dantz's fault but Apple certainly
> >plays a role in the software problems. I think $60 every six months is
> >wrong..... Does anyone else agree?
> 
>      I think this is what is known as an economic decision: if you can 
> get something free or cheaper that gets the job done as well as you 
> need it done, agreed. If not, and your data/operating environment is 
> worth more than $60 every six months to preserve, no. A user's 
> experience and comfort level with shell commands and cron jobs comes 
> into the decision, as well.
> 
>      A lot of the changes Dantz has made in going from 5.1 -> 6.0 are 
> Panther-related, many are the result of user feedback, and many are 
> the result of users' complaints that the Mac version couldn't do what 
> the Windows one could, and where was Dantz's loyalty to the folks who 
> sustained them for so many years, anyway? Such changes cost money: 
> you pay programmers, you run beta test programs, you advertise the 
> new features, you even (once a year?) print new packaging and 
> documentation.
> 
>      Is it worth it to me? On systems we use as backup servers for 
> several machines, yes (even though I gag at the prices for Workgroup 
> Backup and [aargh] Server Backup) --- the work preserved is worth 
> much more, to us. On standalone servers to which we can attach 
> external FireWire drives or arrays, no, because we can use the shell 
> command 'ditto' to create a bootable image of the boot drive every 
> night, and we're less concerned with the ancient history of the drive 
> than its current state. Likewise, on servers serving data archives 
> whose contents (on a percentage basis) change slowly, ditto is more 
> appropriate than Retrospect, and a lot faster. (FWIW, Carbon Copy 
> Cloner is a GUI front end for ditto, but really for 10.2 and earlier 
> --- it used not to be possible to clone the entire disk in a single 
> command line, particularly if you added new, top-level directories, 
> but it is in 10.3). For laptops, we like products such as CMS's ABS 
> Plus, which perform an incremental backup as soon as you attach the 
> FireWire cable. YM, of course, MV.
> 
>      For a home/small office user unused to unix shell commands, 
> though, Retrospect Express is a very nice solution.... once the user 
> understands the terms in the documentation as Dantz uses them. The 
> original poster's desirement was exactly the kind of thing at which 
> Retrospect excels: I want to back up the whole shebang once a month, 
> and my working files every night --- especially when you consider 
> Retrospect's capability for allowing the user to go back to a 
> snapshot on any date on which a backup was performed.
> 
>      Sorry for the length of the rant.
> 
> 						Joe Gurman
> 
> -- 
> "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."
>                                                              - Douglas 
> Adams, 1952 - 2001
> 
> Joseph B. Gurman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics
> Branch, Greenbelt MD 20771 USA
>