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I love that i launched it today only to find that the script that automagically backs up my hard drive every night at 10PM has not run since 1/26. How nice. Why you ask? Well who knows. Not Retrospect. Not a thing out of the ordinary in the log. Everything was fine on 1/26 and then nothing until i manually ran it today. Thank goodness i was shutting my machine down this weekend. i usually shut it down every so often and i make sure to manually run the backup when i do.
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I dumped Retrospect years ago for this among other reasons. It's one of those programs that appears to have at one point been the defacto choice and then it just rode on its coattails from then on.
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I also dumped Retrospect for that reason. I use Apple's Backup now which isn't too bad, except that it still seems to have trouble telling time: it starts backing up almost randomly. I think what happens is it reschedules a backup if my computer is asleep at the designated time. I wish it could just wake it up.
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Hm, it took me all of a minute to locate the place in the Retrospect Client prefs where you tell it how frequently you want to be notified if a backup hasn't been performed.
I know it defaults to seven days. Did you forget that you turned it off?
...yet another user error blamed on Retrospect...
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YMMV, but I've found Retrospect Express to be an effective (and cheap, like $10) daily backup tool. I use iBeeZz to wake my Powerbook at 1:00 am, then iCal launches an Applescript that mounts an external Firewire HD for the backup and RE back ups my client files and all emails; then I have Chronosync back up the same data (belt and suspenders approach here), Chrono launches another Applescript to dismount the drive and then quits, after which IBeeZz puts the Powerbook back to sleep.
This setup has worked reliably for over two years, and the whole deal cost under $40.
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[quote mattkime]Hm, it took me all of a minute to locate the place in the Retrospect Client prefs where you tell it how frequently you want to be notified if a backup hasn't been performed.
I know it defaults to seven days. Did you forget that you turned it off?
...yet another user error blamed on Retrospect...
Ummm...its only a user error if the user actually DOES something. Did I go into the retrospect prefs on 1/27 and adjust ANYTHING? Negative. Did I open retrospect at all to do anything? Negative. It just stopped working.
I suppose it would take me all of a minute to locate the place in the Retrospect Client prefs where you tell it how frequently you want to be notified if a backup hasn't been performed...IF there was any indication that I actually NEEDED to.
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I'm with matt on this one. You have to know how your backup program works and how it notifies you of failures. That's just part of the game. I like to get notification of successful backups also as I am paranoid.
Dave
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matt,
Had the same issue bazookaman speaks of happen to multiple Mac set ups across several different office locations. He's not forgetting to set it right, the program is forgetting his preferences. I'd also had other troubles with retrospect and the reliability of backups for other flubs, but this one rang the memory bell.
I'm not saying that it doesn't work for anyone; I know some people love it. Personally, one of the reasons I switched was that I wanted/needed clone-type backups rather than proprietary (whether or not Retro does this now is moot; it didn't way back when or didn't make it easy enough to use).
So, yeah, I'm with bazooka in blaming Retro. Much like a number of other programs, it faced no competition for so long it got bloated and sloppy, and when it tried to fix itself too many had already jumped ship. I don't use it, don't recommend it, and recommend that people consider other options if they are using it.
