database

This program is powerful and versatile, but it's difficult to use, especially if you use different media (hard disk, zip disks, DVDs, etc.). They also call things that we were already familiar with, like disk sets and incremental backups, differently. The printed manual is nice, though.

To the guy from Pa. who couldn't use the DVD writer: next time get a better namebrand. Retrospect works great with the built-in Toshiba DVD burner in my laptop.

For over a decade, I've looked for the perfect backup utility, and I thought that I'd finally found it. It had to be automatic without needing a third-party add-on (unlike built-in Windows backup utilities), it had to incremental but smart enough to know what I'd changed (whereas others seem to take guesses, not always accurately), it had to allow for multiple backup routines (e.g. daily to another hardrive and weekly to a Zip drive), and it had to be user friendly (or my wife wouldn't use it, too).

Ta-da - this does all that. .... BUT, if you want to backup opened files, be prepared to spend hundreds of dollars extra, ouch! For example, I need a daily backup of my Outlook *.PST file(email, contacts, todos, appointments, etc.) but I routinely leave Outlook open rather than closing it every night. When I realized that this entailed an extra cost, I lowered my rating of this product from 5 to 3 stars.

So, I guess I'm still looking...

Bought the package in the first place for use with my Onstream ADR tapestreamer. Retrospect works flawlessy with this hardware. The inferface looks Spartan and could be a bit more intuitive but is still better then most competitors. Still I give the package 5 stars, because it works fast and reliable. Gives me the feeling of putting my data in a safe vault. Does everything one expects of a backup app, much options and once installed and configured to my needs, it works fully automatic. I let it make a daily backup on my second harddrive and every week on tape. What I like especially is that Retrospect, after the initial backup, saves only modified files with a minimum of space on the media used. Looks like the usual incremental backup? It's better then that. Last week my wife worked on an old document and saved it erroneously under the old name, while she needed also the old version. After a couple of days we used Retrospect to go back to the state of January 6th, to retrieve the file in its former state. And if I delete a file on March 23, I don't see it in the backup of March 24, but I can go back to the backup of March 23 and there it is.