New to Retrospect...

[kpm]

Hi, I just bought a Maxtor 200Gig 'One Touch' to set up a backup routine at a small office (four computers, peer to peer). I Have used Norton Ghost in the past to take a snap shot of computers once they are is set up properly, partitioned and data separate from apps etc... That way, I can do technical support by fire, ie, make a pot of coffee while Ghost runs... But I have Ghost boot disks that allow me to grab the image from the network or from the portable USB HD in case of major disaster. My question, as I am having a bit of a hard time finding the info, is, does Rretrospect have the ability to make it's 'own' boot discs and what is the difference between Retrospect 'Expres' and the pro versions. Also, my understanding of disaster recovery with Retrospect is to actually reinstall the OS, *then* run the disaster recovery. With Norton Ghost, I can boot with a floppy, point to the image and install the image created right away. I have been reading a lot of praise for Retrospect, since discovering it bundled with the Maxtor One Touch, so am wondering if I should be switching from Ghost to Retrospect, but being use to Ghost, I am either not reading the fine manual well enough or am not able to find answers to my questions. Does Retrospect create drive images much like Norton Ghost does? Can I make bootable cd's with Retrospect Express as easily as I can in Ghost? I also must admit the backup language used in the Retrospect Documentation is a bit more challenging to wrap my head around, though that could be due to the sleep deprivation, will have to have another look after I catch up.

Thanks.

[natew]

Hi

 

Retrospect Professional does not make bootable CDs for network computers. This function works only for the local machine.

 

The biggest advantage with Retrospect is that it does incremental backups. Thats a lot faster than making a new ghost image every time. If you want to back up more often - Retrospect is a good way to go.

 

Thanks

Nate

[kpm]

Thanks for the response Nate,

 

I had all ready purchased one shrink wrapped copy or Norton Ghost 9.0 (so the clients could have the manual) and was going to order two more licences for it, when I learned about Retrospect... so held off on the other two, I did, however, end up going with Norton Ghost. It does do incremental backups and find it a bit more user friendly. I also don't want to have to restore a hard drive by reinstalling the OS and then running the Retrospect recovery tools, I would rather run Norton Ghost and get the image of the OS and applications as I configured them the day I snapped the drive image. My reading of the Retrospect docs was that I would have to reinstall the OS and then run the disaster recovery... maybe I read that wrong, or maybe that is a difference between the 'express' and the 'pro' versions... but I ended up sticking with what I knew... I will keep my eyes posted on Retrospect though.

 

Thanks again,

kevin