Product Description

Item #: 69100B. EMC Retrospect is automated, reliable, cost-effective backup and recovery software for small and medium business (SMBs), the distributed enterprise, and home offices. Retrospect protects millions of computers worldwide, providing enterprise-class data protection for file servers, desktops, notebooks, and business-critical applications. Retrospect automatically adjusts backup operations to protect all computers with minimal manual intervention.Designed for home and home offices, Retrospect Professional Edition protects a single Windows desktop or notebook, or a small network of Windows, Macintosh, and Linux desktops and notebooks.

Product Description
EMC Insignia Retrospect Professional - ( v. 7.5 ) - upgrade package
Category: Networking applications
Subcategory: Network - network backup
Version: 7.5
License Type: Upgrade package
License Qty: 2 clients, 1 workstation
License Pricing: Standard
Platform: Windows
Distribution Media: CD-ROM
Package Type: Retail
OS Required: Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Microsoft Windows Vista
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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8194 in Software
• Brand: dantz
• Model: PZ24A0075
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Features

• Sold Individually

Customer Reviews

Better than it was and no alternative for mixed PC Mac backup
[the following is excerpted from my personal blog review]

Retrospect is an old name in Macintosh software. It was the "enterprise" backup solution for many educational institutions and some businesses in the early days of the Mac.

When the Mac was dying, sometime after OS 7, Retrospect went into decline. Towards the end time Dantz, who owned it then, created a Windows SOHO product called "Retrospect Pro" that ran on a Windows machine and backed up both Macs and PCs. I wrote about my use of it many years ago. Most of what I wrote there is still true, so if you want to get my opinion of the overall app take a look at that old page.

Dantz foundered, earning a reputation for miserly customer support and increasingly buggy products. They never really adjusted to OS X; the code base was probably too old to fix and they'd deferred a rewrite for too long.

EMC bought Retrospect, and I figured that was the end. It was indeed the end for the Macintosh product line, it's not been updated in years and it's hard to believe it will be sold after 10.5 is released. I've discovered, however, that they have invested in EMC® Retrospect® Pro 7.5 for Windows.

I found this out because Retrospect Pro 6.5, which I've been reluctantly losing because there is still no alternative for automated backup of a mixed Windows/Mac LAN had become very unstable. It was failing with cryptic error messages, it's a few years old, and I was using it in an unsupported fashion (with clients released for newer server versions) -- there was no sense trying to fix it. I had to either upgrade or switch to individual machine backup - a thought too painful to consider.

I'd held off upgrading for years because Dantz releases were so buggy an "upgrade" only introduced new issues - and left the old issues unchanged. EMC looked worse at first -- no user forums, no trials, nothing. In the past six months or so, however, EMC reinstated user forums and, above all, provided 30 day trial versions of all their products. They'd done enough to deserve a look, they'd dropped the price (buy on Amazon), the upgrade price was reasonable, and I was desperate.

So I tried -- without first uninstalling Retrospect Pro 6.5 (mistake!). The first thing I got were error messages and log entries like this one:

OS: Windows XP version 5.1 (build 2600), Service Pack 2, (32 bit)
Application: C:\Program Files\Retrospect\Retrospect 7.5\retrorun.exe,
Exception occurred on 6/22/2007 at 10:56:33 AM
Exception code: c0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address: 004093c3 0001:000083c3 (null)

and like this:

* retrospect elem.cpp-993

I fumbled around a bit, thinking 7.5 was choking on my complex scripts, but I couldn't fix the problem. The fix was:

* uninstall Retrospect Pro 6.5
* reboot (because Retrospect does ugly things to low levels of the host OS)
* uninstall Retrospect Pro 7.5
* reboot
* heck, reboot again
* install Retrospect Pro 7.5
* reboot
* look for updates
* update and reboot

The 30 day trial then worked. I ran the backups for a week and did a few random file restores and there have been no errors, though I admit that the only Mac I backup now is a PPC Mac running OS X 10.4. I'll soon be adding in the Intel laptop and I'm reasonably sure I'll have problems -- I don't think EMC has many Mac resources left. I run the Windows software on an old XP machine I'll run until it dies and is replaced by a new Intel iMac and an XP VM.

So I bought the upgrade from Amazon, thinking I should get the physical media. The price was cheaper too I think. What you get is a CD - nothing else. No documentation of course, but I know this immensely complex and completely unfriendly software very well. (They've introduced "wizards" to try to make it friendlier, but I disabled those. I've no idea if they help.) The upgrade process is a bit odd, but despite hanging for a bit at one point it completed. What you get with the CD is an "activation code". You enter that on the right page, your old registration code, and your address information to get a new code, which you'd better not lose (it is emailed to you as well as shown online).

In summary, Retrospect Pro is still a very unfriendly and complex hunk of software, and the clients probably don't work properly with a modern Mac, but it's an improvement on recent versions and if you want to backup a mixed LAN affordably and automatically there are no other choices.

BTW, don't expect to be able to do a "bare metal" restore on OS X. That might be theoretically possible, but I've never heard of anyone doing it using Retrospect. This is all about backing up your personal data.

Probably the best choice for home or small business
(This is my review of the full version of this software)

Backing up is not fun, but it is crucial. For a business, the reasons are obvious. For a home user, consider that more and more of your information is moving from paper to bits. Your snapshots, your music, your bank records, the list keeps growing.

What sets backup software apart from other applications (such as word processing) is that defects are extremely damaging. When Microsoft Word weirds out, you just slam your fist down and start writing your document again. If your backup software lets you down during a restore operation, it is a genuine catastrophe.

So stable backup software is essential. My strategy has been to seek out backup software that is marketed to both individual users, and enterprises, the larger the better!

Backup software marketed exclusively to enterprises is too expensive. Backup software marketed to individuals is unstable, just like (for example) Microsoft Money. If your backup software is used by large, powerful companies, then you can hope that these customers will be able to get bugs fixed quickly. YOU don't have the clout to get bugs fixed, but other customers do. You have to hope that the bug you find is making life unpleasant for a large, powerful corporate customer.

I have found two packages that fit this description: Ultrabac and Retrospect. Of the two, Retrospect has a much better feature set. Retrospect has had a feature called "Progressive backup" which is unusual (perhaps unique!) and extremely useful. Recently, Retrospect added a feature called "pruning" which is revolutionary. Nice going Retrospect!

The combination of these two features is simply outstanding. Each of my backup disks contains a "rolling" history of my data, going back over the last two monthes. I do a backup every night, and it requires no intervention on my part. Retrospect automatically deletes old backup data from my media ("pruning"), to prevent filling it up. Retrospect also avoids writing duplicate data to the backup media ("progressive backup"), thus extending the useful capacity of my backup disks.

The sophistication of this backup scheme motivates me to use multiple backup disks. The backup jobs on each backup disk are interdependent, so if there is ever a problem with one of them, all subsequent jobs on the backup disk are at risk. In my opinion, anyway.

So I alternate between two backup disks day by day. Each of these two backup disks contains a history of the state of my computer, going back 60 days, in increments of two days. So if I wish, I can restore the state of my computer to the way it was on any of the last 60 days. I can also retrieve individual files from those 60 days.

The latest version of Retrospect is rock-solid, the way backup software should be. It executes while I sleep, and it has not called attention to itself for as long as I can remember.

This is the backup system that I have dreamed about since I started buying my own computers.

I do have a few reservations about Retrospect. First, it is not that easy to learn how to use. No, it is not a nightmare, but it could have been simpler. As an experienced user, this does not bother me. Your mileage may vary. Second, I was not happy about the 7.0 version of this product. It lived its entire life with some non-trivial shortcomings. I won't go into details, because this is now ancient history. However, I don't think that this is reasonable for a backup program. Finally, it may be the case that EMC is losing interest in the product. There have been layoffs and rumors. You can find these yourself on Google ( The Register ). This is a bit speculative, but it is worth mentioning.

Do these sound like major complaints? That's right, they are not! Retrospect is as good as it gets for the home or small business.

Poor Customer Service
I contacted the vendor for help/assistance in regards to a problem I was having. The Support from the company was lacking. If I had known that I would not received the help I would have looked elsewhere. I do not recommend the vendor.