ghoff

I too would like to know how painless the upgrade from v9 to v11.5 is going to be. I too am running Mac OS X 10.7.5. I would be installing V11 Retrospect on top of V9, so I worry what happens if the install does not go well and I have no way to get to my backups.

There is a way: 1) Rebuild to convert the Retrospect 6 backup set to a read-only version 9 set. 2) Copy Media the content of the converted set to an empty Disk Media Set. I tried this as I had a number of Retro 6 sets that were not yet due for recycle. That said, I was not happy with the results and ultimately elected to simply start fresh Media Sets, meanwhile retaining the Retro 6 sets until their scheduled recycle. I fortunately had excess capacity on my external drives due to recent downsizing for my network. There were two issues with this process: 1) It took a long time to run the Rebuild plus the Copy 2) It seemed like Retrospect 9 was not doing a good job of de-duping files. That is, if I ran a backup to the new Disk Media Set after no significant changes to the Source volumes, I saw a large number of files backed up. I did not dig into the issues further, as I needed to get Retrospect 9 operational due to a forced upgrade to Mac OS X Lion.

Guess I was hoping Retrospect, Inc. might take a hint and provide the authoritative list. Thanks for your insights on the list that includes dev, home, net and Volumes. I am assuming a similar line of reasoning might apply to the other files in the list: i. e., these folders and files are created and maintained by the "system" and should not be simply overwritten by a restore from backups. I have found one more folder that Retrospect 9 is not backing up: private/var/vm

The short answer: Yes. The longer, but not definitive, answer: Retrospect 9 will convert your Retrospect 6.1 Backup Sets to a Retrospect 9 File Media Set. From that, you can use Retrospect 9 to retrieve files. I have not pursued this capability further because I found it would be of limited utility in my environment. Limitations of "Reading Retrospect 6.1 Backup Sets using Retrospect 9": 1) Must convert the Backup Set to a Media Set. This takes many hours. 2) Contrary to the documentation, Retrospect 9 does NOT just make a catalog of the Backup Set, it actually creates a new File Media Set. This takes as much space as the original Set. So, in summary, it seems to work, but I have done only a limited test. I suggest you download and install a Trial of Retrospect 9 to see if it meets your needs. Glenn Retrospect 9 Trial

Thanks for the reminder - I had not looked at the rules that came with Retrosepect 9 for a while. But, these packaged rules are not what I am looking for. Based on my observations, Retrospect has an internal list of files it excludes from all backups, regardless of any rules applied to the backup by the script. As an example, nowhere in the rules is there found the above mentioned exclusion for Lion's "Saved Application State" folders. Apparent internal exclusions - observed for the root folder of a Snow Leopard volume: .Spotlight-V100 .fseventsd .hotfiles.btree dev home net Volumes - content excluded private/tmp - content excluded So, I am looking for the "complete" list of exclusions built into Retrospect 9. This would include those new for Lion, and also for Leopard, Tiger, UNIX, Windows. Glenn Retrospect 9 Trial

Anyone know what the "Backup Exclude List" contains? I am writing rules for Retrospect 9 and want to exclude things like logs, caches, and assorted other system and application files that are not needed for the restore of a working system. But I would rather not duplicate files Retrospect already excludes. The only hint of the backup exculde list is this quote from the Retrospect 9 for Mac Release Notes: RET-6081: Add Mac OS X Lion's "Saved Application State" folders to the backup exclude list I have tried searching all the obvious sources with no success, but I am sure I have not tried all possible combinations of description. I hope someone already has a clue. Glenn Retrospect 9 Trial