Emc Retrospect Express Backup 5.0 For Mac
Kistiñe Dziuk
The only thing that I did recently on that laptop was to upgrade its BIOS using HP's latest BIOS upgrade pack for that particular laptop. Prior to this BIOS update, Retrospect was able to backup the System State successfully. Then, about a month passed during which several things changed/updated on my laptop, but the only one that I can think might have a bearing on this problem is that BIOS update.
I've tried various ways around the problem of Retrospect not being able to backup the system state but nothing has worked so far. I've run Retrospect "AS ADMINISTRATOR" and still get the same error messages. I've made sure Retrospect is upgraded to the latest available version.
This line is telling the user that Retrospect is trying to backup the System State but the underlying Windows function that is called is returning an error condition to Retrospect that Retrospect dose not understand.
Thanks, Wizer! I actually found the original disk and loaded the software. HOWEVER, I was disappointed in that it only permitted a complete backup NOT an incremental one. With only an 80gig drive, I would run out of space in just a few days. I eventually used the Windows Backup Utility which does it all nicely.
EMC Retrospect Express HD does what it says on the tin. It's also one of the easiest backup tools I've ever tried. On the downside, this ease of use is probably the reason why the program lacks some advanced options that you find in other backup tools, such as more complex filters to select data or more scheduling options.
The product is focused on the small and medium enterprise (SME) market. It performs three types of backup: "A Recycle backup deletes a backup set and adds all files, and a New Media backup creates a new backup set, copying all the files not included. Again this represents all files. Once installed, scripts can also be introduced to enable Scheduled backup using predetermined information supplied by the administrator. This information contains source, destination and other criteria, which enables a backup session to scan and back up one volume at a time, requiring less memory than an immediate backup."[2]
Retrospect Desktop 5.5 is a solid, versatile piece of backup software with many features. All its extra tools create so many choices, in fact, that Retrospect isn't as easy to use as NovaBackup, Simple Backup or GoBack. Thankfully, Retrospect's superior documentation and large selection of backup destinations make up for the steep learning curve. But if you want a full-featured backup system that's easy to use from the start, we recommend Roxio's GoBack.
The Desktop version expands with optional clients to cover other computers, so you can pay extra to cover everyone in your office, for example. Before choosing between the two, check to make sure the software supports the backup hardware (CD-R/RW, tape, removable disk) that you have. There's an extensive list of supported devices on Dantz's web site.
The Retrospect interface appears easy to use. Its first button, Sources, lets you pick the drives or folders you want to back up. The Destination button lets you name your backup. Unfortunately, an extra step causes considerable confusion. You have to hit the Selecting button to open a dialogue that lets you pick whether you are backing up all files, applications, documents and so on -- but no more than that. You then need to drop down to the Preview button to select which folders and files you wish to back up.
What sets Retrospect apart from the other backup products on the market is what Dantz calls a 'backup set'. Most other backup programs use a file's archive bit (part of a file's attributes) as a way to track which files need to be backed up. Retrospect tracks this differently, by way of its own catalogue file, which is stored on the drive being backed up.
The catalogue keeps track of all the files that have been backed up, including the filename, modified date and size. When it's time to do another backup to the same set, Retrospect compares this catalogue to the contents of the hard drive, rather than the contents of the backup stored on the CD, tape, or disk. Retrospect will back up only hard drive files that have been changed since the last backup.
An Incremental Plus backup -- backing up only the files that have changed each day -- is a convenient feature. Say you've been working on your novel every day and making daily backups using Retrospect. Your backup set will, by default, contain each saved version. If you decide on Saturday that you like Wednesday's version better, you can go back to Wednesday. You aren't stuck with having only the last backed-up version from Friday.
Retrospect uses its own dominant file format when writing to removable disks and CDs, so the format claims the whole disk. For instance, after backing up 100MB-worth of files to a backup set on a 2GB Jaz drive, the drive will show up in Windows Explorer as full. It's not (there's plenty of room for more files), it's just that Retrospect isn't going to share any space. Luckily, this doesn't happen when saving to another hard drive.
Retrospect's online help, reached via the F1 key or by clicking Help, is on the skimpy side, but it does come with an excellent 246-page manual that walks you through each process, discusses some of the background technology that the program uses, and gives hints on backup strategies.
If you want a capable backup program with the ability to backup multiple versions of your work, then Retrospect is worth the learning curve needed to use it. For example, if you work on long projects that get revised multiple times, Retrospect may be a good choice. However, if you don't need that capability, consider NovaBackup or GoBack.
You might want to look at Retrospect for laptop backup. Retrospect has a Proactive Backup feature that will check the network for client computers that have not been backed up in the longest amount of time and those computers will have the highest priority for the next backup.
All good recommendations just stay away from Carbonite. For whatever reason my company insists on it. Carbonite will bottleneck you to almost no upload speed at all after only a few GBs are uploaded. This counts for restores as well. It takes days to restore backups from Carbonite.
We've put a lot of emphasis on improving the speed of our upload/restore speeds. For example, our server backup product can back up 500GB in less than a day. While our endpoint product obviously isn't at that level, upload speed is something we're working on for that product line as well.
Additionally, the limitations of restore speed over the internet is one reasons we have put an emphasis on hybrid backup solutions (our server backup and appliance are both local-cloud hybrid products). This way, you have a local copy for quick recovery so you can get back up and running, but you have a cloud copy for ultimate protection.
You could also look into NovaBACKUP Professional Opens a new window. It's a really simple and straightforward backup solution for laptops and PCs that provides local and online recovery. You can use a local devices such as NAS for DR and then backup more critical data to the cloud. We offer a free consultation and trial downloads you can check out here.
In your specific case, our de-duplication together with encryption, both at source will help you significantly in two ways. First, for remote users there is no need for VPN as Vaultize creates a secure tunnel itself and second, the backup will be efficient because of de-dupication on endpoints.
I am running vista in fusion and have a read/write shared folder that I can access from within Vista. I wanted to Backup some Vista data using Retrospect express on the shared folder. However Retrospect asks me for a username/password to access the folder. I tried all known combinations (MacOSX user or Vista user) but none worked. The same setting worked perfectly well in parallels. Why did I migrate to fusion ??? ....
In our real-world performance tests, the REV drive posted quite reasonable speeds and for testing we installed it without any problems in a Boston Supermicro 3.2GHz Pentium D system running Windows XP SP2. Copying a 690MB video clip between the drive and PC returned read and write speeds of 22MB/sec and 20MB/sec respectively. It also put in a good showing for backup, as we configured Retrospect to secure 12GB of test data to the REV where it reported an average speed of 16.5MB/sec.
I did some market research, and although I found that there were many backup solutions available, none seemed to fulfill my specific needs. What I wanted was a backup utility with the following features:
The current implementation of Time Machine is an uneven compromise between simplicity and control. In any backup application, the user should be able to control three basic things: what to backup, where to store the backup, and when the backup runs. Apple has taken away two of those choices, allowing the user only the choise of where to store the backup.
Another idea I wanted to introduce in Backup Buddy, is that the user can have more than one backup. Time Machine just backups everything into a massive archive. Backup Buddy can also do that, but it can be used with much more precision. The concept of backup actions allows the user to store different groups of files into different destinations, or even store the same group of files into two or more destinations at the same time.
Retrospect is the most trusted name in Mac backup and recovery, with more than two decades of field-tested expertise - protecting Macs and Windows PCs and servers worldwide from data loss due to user error, computer failure or site-wide disasters such as fire, theft or flood.
aa06259810