EMC needs to sort this one out pretty quick. I can’t believe it made it to the market in the condition that software it. I’m not touching any updates until I start to read glowing feedback.

Even so, I’ve decided to stay with Retrospect 8.* for now. I’m hoping this piece of garbage will gradually get better. Three minor revs from now, it might be where it should have been when they started selling it. But I’ve already paid for it, so as long as there’s no retrograde motion in the functionality of their updates, I’ll stay put.

For an alternative…

I strongly recommend against Memeo Lifeagent.

In this post’s comments, @Daniel spoke positively of Crashplan Pro.

In this post’s comments, Adam Carrier mentioned BRU from TOLIS Group.

When you make your purchase, could you come back here and tell us what you did? Thanks!

So, what would anyone suggest as an alternative? Time Machine is completely insufficient for my requirements, so please let’s not get into that discussion. Instead of asking me what those requirements are, how about just names of software people use and LIKE, and I’ll figure out which of them might be suitable (and others can do the same thing, to make this conversation more useful.)

JT

I used to tout Retrospect to friends, and now I’ve turned 180 degrees around. I’m wondering whether to throw in the towel completely, or stick with them until the next minor release and see how that turns out.

Funny you should mention the forums — I had the same impression. Why do forums suck so badly in so many sites? Dang it, I wrote about that, too.

They just released 8.1 and while it has fixed “hundreds” of bugs, there are many hundreds more to go. For me, it arbitrarily won’t back up “Proactive Backup” clients as well as regular Mac clients. The email notifications are completely broken, so you’ll be combing through the log every day to see what got backed up and what didn’t. The forums are full of bug reports and very few workarounds – plus the fact that the search function on the forums is atrocious.

After many years struggling with the poorly designed and buggy 5.x and 6.x, 8.x has proven to me that the problem is not with the software, but with the software development methods used at EMC. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

I’ve had my home backups goofed up because of it; your situation is of course far worse.

Don’t know if you follow the support forums, but, last week the product manager commented that another update is scheduled for this week. It will have “hundreds” of bug fixes, and, finally, support for PPC Macs.

Tell you what. If they don’t release a user manual soon, I’m going to really flame them, because no manual this week will mean that the manual didn’t exist even in draft form when they released 8.0.

I hope 8.0 isn’t doing any damage to your reputation within your firm! Are you catching any flak?

EMC’s announcement of Retrospect 8 for Mac highlights some “Important Information”, namely that it doesn’t run on PowerPC Macs, but that “of course” It still backs up PowerPC clients. So you figure they’ve disclosed the major limitations, and if you’re on an Intel Mac you’re OK to upgrade.

You would be wrong. Once you’ve purchased the software, you find out, either by trying to use it or by reading all the way to the bottom of the Read Me file that v8.0 will not recognize — will not append to or restore from — backups created with previous Retrospect versions! Is it not fundamental to a backup program to be backwards compatible? Apparently not. I’m supposed to keep using my old Retrospect 6.1 to append to and restore from my existing (large) set of AIT-5 tapes, and spend $3,000 for another set of backup tapes for use with v8.0.

Retrospect 8 will not import clients or scripts from previous Retrospect versions, and cannot access backup sets created by previous versions. It is not an “upgrade” in the usual sense: it is a different program, related to previous versions only by similarity of function and EMC’s hope that existing users will buy it and only later discover the trouble and expense required to make use of it.