I'm new here--Quick question about backing up "DATA"

[Guest]

Will Retrospect back up ALL my data--including 1) internet "favorites" 2) e-mail messages saved to my hard drive

 

Will I be able to access them in a "readable" form down the road if need be?

 

Thanks!

[awnews]

Retrospect can back up all the files on your HD. You could run into an issue with "Open Files" not being backed up depending on your OS, which options you buy, etc.

 

Things such as IE "Favorites" and emails will be backed up, but may not be something you can easily read later (e.g. Outlook saves it's data in a proprietary format; may be encrypted depending on how you set things up). But Retro will back up the *files* and it's up to you to be able to something with it. You might want to test this out in advance.

 

If you back up using a "Normal" backup, Retro saves the backup data in a proprietary format. For a File/Data backup to a HD you can see the files, but you'd need Retro to open and extract stuff from them. If saved to a CDR/DVDR, etc. Retro formats these in its own "unique" way so that you can't even see its files on the CDR/DVDR unless you use Retro.

 

You can do a "Duplicate" backup to save files in their original format (don't get multi-version backups this way). I do also use some other backup programs as well, one which saves its backups in Zip format (nice because you can open the backups later from anywhere).