Retrospect 6.0 Desktop Mac

For my use on my G4 Mac (dual 825 Mhz processors w/1 GByte of ram) I find it pretty hard to use.

For example, to backup files from a single directory, you have to choose the "Source" but that only let's you choose a source disk or create a "Volume" that only seems to be able to contain a whole disk. There's no option to directly specify a directory as the backup "Source". There's no screen specific help button on the screens where these terms are mentioned.

To backup an individual directory, it looks like you have to specify a "Selecting" option separate from the "Source" option where the "Selecting" option let's you specify substring to match against filenames/directoris when looking at the "Source". Again there's no screen specific help button in the "Selecting" screen.

I'm trying to backup the files in a singe directory right now, but Retrospect seems to be scanning all files and folders on my Mac. I'm actually writing this review while waiting for Dantz to scan my whole hard drive.

This seems brain damaged. I suspect I'm doing something wrong. So I'll go read the manual and figure it out, but that's exactly the problem. You have to read the manual to use this product.

I'm also curious about why Retrospect has to scan each file on the whole hard disk *before* starting the backup. When finishing a whole disk backup it spends something like a half hour "closing files" (after files have already been backed up and verified on my 60 Gbyte disk with 15 Gbytes of space used).


Shameful Marketing, Manual Writing and Software Design   June 25, 2005
D. Archibald (USA)
26 out of 28 found this review helpful

Over the past two months I've tried to get this software to create two sets of incremental backups of a Mac on two USB2 hard disks. Despite more than 20 years experience with computers, and a successful installation of Norton Ghost 9.0 backup software on a PC, I have not been able to get dantz Retrospect Backup 6.0 Desktop Macintosh to work on my system. I'm sure that a dantz(TM) engineer could sit down in front of the Mac, execute a dozen or so commands and get it to work properly, but that would not in any way prove that Retrospect Backup 6.0 is an acceptable product. The problem of this, and many other software packages, is that there are a huge number of combinations of optional settings that don't work, so if the errors are intermittant, it can take years to debug without proper guidance from the designers. The Retrospect Backup 6.0 backup manual is at least six times thicker than the manual that came with first MacIntosh computers. Its content usefulness is next to zero. The same can be said for the usefulness of the online help menus. The consumer expectation for a desktop backup solution is a single button guiding you through menus and getting the setup done and verified in five minutes. With so much easy-to-use and intuitive Mac and PC software available today, it is next to criminal for the dantz(TM) marketing materials to claim ease of use, especially software written for Mac, where the ease-of-use standard is very high. I recommend that people never buy any dantz(TM) software product. If the CEO feels otherwise, I'd like to hear his/her case and I may reconsider. When they call I will only charge two dollars per minute.


Unpleasant to use   January 29, 2005
Nicolas S. Martin (Indianapolis, IN United States)
22 out of 27 found this review helpful

Nobody would give the authors of this software an ease-of-use award. From the outset it behaves as if it were written to please IT specialists and others whose careers depend on things being complicated and incomprehensible to mortals. Even when Retrospect is being directed to do something simple, it is not simple to do because it speaks some alien jargon. It could really serve as a model for bad interface design.

It isn't much discussed, but the Mac is really lacking quality tools for backup, file synchronization, and similar critical tasks.


A bad thing to start   December 29, 2005
D. Meriwether (Bay Area, CA)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful

If you're not already a user, Retrospect for Mac is not a product you want to buy into. The interface hasn't been substantially updated in over a decade. In this decade Dantz (EMC) has charged it's users half a dozen times for "upgrades" which should be free updates as all that was added was the ability to actually work with the current operating system.

The interface is obtuse and backwards. For example, in a slap in the face to anyone with usability experience, Retrospect demands, in a modal dialog, that the user approves and affirms the desire to back up. Gee, let's see, I just got through booting Retrospect, selecting "Back Up" and about 45 other steps directly involved with only one purpose: backing up my hard drive... maybe now is the time to reconsider?!?

Retrospect is also exceedingly fickle and fragile. Exactly what you don't want in times of emergency. For example, I was backing up on a 4x SuperDrive, then I bought a new Mac and wanted to back up to a 16x SuperDrive. Retrospect would not allow it, complaining that the "device was too different." The slightest scratch on a DVD and Retrospect gets sick and dies--sometimes taking the DVD--and sometimes the entire DVD drive--with it. One time after Retrospect crashed, the drive wouldn't spin down: even after restart. I had to reset the OpenFirmware; a process not many Mac users do or should have to know about.

Retrospect is S L O W. I've got a Quad G5 backing up to aforementioned 16x DVD drive. The drive sits idle about 80% of the time. I get no speed improvement over the 750 MHx G4/ 4x SuperDrive. The bottleneck isn't the processor or the SATA chain or the DVD drive, the bottleneck is built into Retrospect.

Retrospect transforms your data from being readable anywhere into their undisclosed proprietary format. This means that when Dantz finally folds (any day now) you won't be able to retrieve your data.

The problem is, of course, alternatives are few and far between. Basic HD to HD backups can be done with Carbon Copy Cloner. But they're not incremental and cannot write to DVDs. iBackup has so little info on their site, I can't tell you what it does. Dobry Backuper looks promising. Intego Personal Backup X4 might merit looking into as well.