Several Express questions

[gordonwd]

I'm a prospective user (don't have the product yet), and have a few general questions. I'm planning on backing up to a USB 2.0 external drive and will probably use the Backup option as opposed to Duplicate (I'm familiar with "backup set" concepts from having use tapes for many years).

 

 

 

1) Does Retroflect Express provide a way to exclude specific files or directories from the backup? I see no need to backup the junk in the "Temporary Internet Files" folders, not to mention swap files, etc.

 

 

 

2) Other than the tutorials, is there any documentation that provides some guidelines on how to set up a backup strategy for a typical single home-type PC? That is, how often to do incrementals, maintaining multiple backup sets, how often to recycle, etc.

 

 

 

3) How does Express handle backing up files that are currently open while the backup is in progress?

 

 

 

4) Does the current registry get backed up, or just the copy of the registry that is saved on the disk.

 

 

 

Doug Gordon

[lv2ski]

1) No, only desktop or above has this capability unless you manually go through and unselect what you don't want to backup.

 

 

 

2) www.dantz.com/tutorials and

 

www.dantz.com/knowledgebase

 

 

 

3) We can backup all open files except open database files or open PST files.

 

 

 

4) The registry is backed up.

 

 

 

 

[IanWorthington]

When Melissa says you can manually deselect items yourself, she means that this is a process you have to do it each time you do a backup. This is probably not what you had in mind :-)

 

 

 

However she neglected to mention that Retrospect Express does provide a number of pre-configured selector sets allowing you to remove the usual suspects from your backup. One of these removes (from memory, so caveat emptor) the temp directories and the swap file. You'd have to run check on the selector to verify you exclude what you want. They do *not* exclude the recycle bin nor the Norton recycle bin extensions, which would be a nice option to have.

 

 

 

If you want a custom set, you need Desktop or above. And some patience to figure out how the little buggers work.

 

 

 

And if you're going to write to CD then download the free trial and test it *thouroughly* in your 30 days.

 

 

 

Ian

 

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