Sarasota PC Monitor
Tech Talk (11/03)
Using Retrospect for backups
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Retrospect 6.5 Professional is the latest version of backup software from Dantz Development Corporation. The Professional version is designed for use in the Small Office/Home Office (SoHo) environment. As purchased, it is licensed to run on a single computer and can backup two additional networked computers. It also includes ?Open File Backup? and ?Disaster Recovery? options as part of the Professional package.
I installed the software on my primary computer that runs Windows XP. This system has an external 40 GB hard drive that I use for backup. I also have a desktop and a laptop networked with the XP system. Both of these use Windows 98SE. They are also dual boot machines running Linux as a second operating system.
The installation on the XP system required that I be in ?administrator? mode, not ?user? mode. Generally, I prefer to use the ?user? mode that has access to fewer services and would make life more difficult should a hacker get through my firewalls. But, almost all software that is XP compatible requires administrator privileges to accomplish the installation process. After completing the installation on the XP system, I installed the ?Client? software on the two networked systems.
My reading of the user information for Retrospect led me to believe that I could run a backup while in ?user? mode, which I find preferable. Interestingly, most applications allow you to select ?Run As? from a menu when you right click the application in the Program menu or the desktop icon. This is not true for Retrospect. This option is missing when you right click the application. However, I did not find this out until later on in my testing of the software.
So, my first step was to set up a backup set. The backup set includes the files to be backed up and the destination for these files. You can also set encryption and compression. My first backup included the Documents & Settings files from the boot drive. This turned out to be 6,073 files and 7.9 GB. A little larger than I expected. Since it was over 4 GB, I decided it should be saved to the NTFS partition on the external drive. When I started the backup I immediately received a message that I did not have rights to that drive. Rather than chase that error down at the moment, I changed the destination to a FAT32 partition on the external drive. That worked. According to the log file it took Retrospect 2 hours to backup and verify the 7.9 GB. This was probably partly due to the 16 files Retrospect wrote to the backup drive. It split the backup into 14 - 640 MB files and two files of about 100 MB. I found it interesting that the overall compression was 0%. There were also 6 open file errors related to registry entries. I couldn?t find any explanation for that either.
Dantz has no free support for any of its backup products. They do have a knowledge base of basic, simple problems that most users could solve without assistance. For any more detailed or technical support, you have to buy an annual support package or a ? ?Per-Incident? support package. For free support, they have an online user forum. You can search for your particular problem and see if anyone had a similar problem and if a solution has been posted. In many cases, there were no solutions posted to this forum. It was not clear whether Dantz had any of their techs monitoring this forum. So, if you have problems, you are pretty much on your own, unless you are willing to purchase paid support.
The documents directory from a networked computer was backed up to the FAT32 partition on my external drive. This backup was 350 MB and the Retrospect reports said it took 13 minutes, also with 0% compression. Next, I wanted to backup my laptop files to a CD. Retrospect is supposed to be able to backup to almost any device: hard drives, ZIP drives, tape drives, CD?s and DVD?s. So I tried to setup a Backup Set using my CD burner as the destination device. However, Retrospect indicated in the device list that I had only two drives; a removable drive that I identified finally as my ZIP drive and a CD-ROM. There was no CD burner recognized, nor did it list the external USB drive.
Since my CD-RW is a Plextor 24/10/40A that is listed on the Dantz web site as being fully compatible with Retrospect, I was more than a little confused. Finally, after doing more study of the manual and the Dantz user forum, I changed the way I was doing backups. I shifted everything to ?administrator? mode. Only then did I find the burner in the device list. Following this none of the backups showed any errors. And, I was able to successfully backup the laptop to a CD-RW. The only unsolved problem is that Retrospect has lost the catalog file for the complete boot drive backup. However, on the Retrospect tools menu, there is an option to re-create a missing catalog file. No hints exist as to why the file went missing. Using the recovery option, I was able to recreate the 24.5 MB catalog file. This took one and one-half hours to complete. However, it was running in the background while I worked on other applications.
After you have done your initial backup, Retrospect can add subsequent backups to your existing backup set. Their progressive backup adds only new or changed data to your backup set. Restoring data can be done by a complete restore of an entire backup that would restore the newest files from the backup set. Or, you can select files and/or folders to be restored. The restore can be to the original file/folder location, or to a separate folder containing the name of the backup set.
Retrospect also allows you to create a ?Disaster Recovery CD?. In order to create this you first have to make a complete backup of your boot disk. I did a complete backup of my boot drive, which has 15 GB of files, to my NTFS partition on the external drive. It took 3.5 hours for the backup and verification of these files. This time the log file and the clock were pretty close to the same value. The next step is to select the ?Disaster Recovery? option. During this process you will have to provide the Windows serial number which is incorporated into the recovery CD. Then the recovery files are written to an ISO file that needs to be burned to a CD. This produces a bootable CD. The CD combined with the complete backup can restore your boot drive after a massive failure. Since you can easily update the complete backup, you will have a current copy of your boot drive available should your drive fail. This process took about an hour to write the ISO file and it required my Windows XP disk so files could be copied from that. Then I was able to burn the ISO file to a CD-RW in just a few minutes with my NTI burner software.
All in all, Retrospect does provide a very complex software backup package. There are many other aspects of it, including automating the backup process. However, given its overall complexity, it would take some time to become familiar with everything it can provide. Luckily, the basic backup and restore are relatively simple and can be setup quite quickly. Just remember that with Windows XP you must be in administrator mode when running Retrospect.
Retrospect Professional 6.5 has a suggested retail price of $129.00. The street price ranges from $80 to $90, including shipping. Dantz Development Corporation, 4 Orinda Way, Orinda, CA 94563. www.dantz.com. 925-253-3000. ?
*Dr. Lewis is a former university & medical school professor. He has been working with personal computers for more than thirty years. He can be reached via e-mail at bwsail@yahoo.com or voice mail at 941/925-3047. :
Copyright 2003. This article is from the November 2003 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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