Retrospect 8 ships for Mac...asks for another chance

I used to swear by Retrospect back in the days when it belonged to Dantz. Now-a-days I'm using Time Machine and a Drobo.

Thanks for the mention, Seth; we seriously appreciate it.

We also realize that just one new release isn't going to bring everyone back. That's why we have several Mac releases planned for this year, and it's why I tell people here at EMC that version 8.0's most important new feature is recommitment to the Mac market.

Regarding a Retrospect/Mozy hybrid, we added basic integration in 7.6 release on Windows, mid last year. One thing that makes the new Mac 8.0 edition different—and makes Mozy integration less straightforward—is that the Retrospect application (the UI) has been separated from the Retrospect engine, which runs as a background process. The UI and the engine can now be installed on separate Macs. If that's the case, do we invoke Mozy on the Mac where the Retrospect engine is running, or where the console is installed?

Until the Retrospect and Mozy teams have some cycles to spend on further collaboration, they'll have to be configured and run separately.

One important thing to consider when using Mozy and Retrospect together today is to let Mozy back up the original data, not the Retrospect backups. When used for the former, you get the full benefit of Mozy's single-instance storage and block-level differencing across computers. If you point Mozy at the Retrospect backups, more data ends up being copied to Mozy, and restores from Mozy require additional steps.

Finally, I will just mention that Mozy provides more accurate Mac restores than CrashPlan, which will often restore unwanted renamed, deleted, and moved files. So it's a good choice for off-siting.

Thanks again for the mention!

Best regards,
Eric Ullman
Director, Product Management
EMC Retrospect

How many users of Retrospect are running networks with ONLY intel macs? Retrospect doesn't support non-intel macs (yet, they claim they're working on it). 5 years and they decided to ditch all computers over 3-4 years old? Well, all my waiting for naught.

YAWN...it was slow five years ago...now...who cares. Eric, you basically abandoned the Apple market for years and expect us to come running back to you with open arms? Get real, brah.

I have just configured my Netgear ReadyNAS Pro (made by the same folks who used to be called Infrant) for Time Machine support. The newly released firmware ver. 4.2.4 supports Time Machine backups natively. This NAS is an amazing device, and has been rated the fastest NAS in the industry (perhaps in its class) a few months ago. Even though I was able to do Time Machine backups to it prior to 4.2.4, that required a hack. Starting with 4.2.4, it can host Time Machine sparsebundles natively. The configuration takes about 20 seconds before you can start copying to it. Other ReadyNAS platforms - the ones cheaper than ReadyNAS Pro - support this feature in their latest beta firmware, but the final is coming out soon for those platforms as well.

However, what I am really interested in is if it is possible to restore from Time Machine backups onto a blank hard drive in case of a catastrophic failure. This type of restore - the full restore without first having to install Mac OS - appears to be available from Time Machine backups hosted on Time Capluse, and the procedure is described on the Apple web site. The reason I am posting this information here is to inquire if anyone has tried this procedure from a Time Machine backup hosted on a network share other than Time Capsule. If someone has tried this with a ReadyNAS, that's even better. I have asked this question on the ReadyNAS support site (www.infrant.com/forum), but has gotten no answer.

By the way, I am not affiliated with Netgear in any way other than the fact that I own two ReadyNAS servers. Thanks!