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Upgrading from 6.1.3 to 10. Are there any issues to know?


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I need to upgrade my server OS from Leopard to Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I am now running Retrospect 6.1.3 and everything has been rock solid. I didn't go to 7 at the time it wasn't backward compatible and as 8 and 9 came out there wasn't a need. And since the interface changed a lot we didn't want to deal with that. Now I have to change so I wanted to know if there were any issues to know about upgrading before I do.

 

Thanks.

 

Cliff

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Retrospect 8 is terrible. Absolutely terrible. I have been thinking about upgrading to 9 or 10 (although being charging to buy an upgrade to fix a buggy product rankles) but the bug reports on the forum keep making me waver. v9 or v10 may well be less buggy but it's hard to determine that from the forums.

 

See:

http://forums.retrospect.com/index.php?/topic/150471-retro-1001-very-buggy/ (v10.0.1, since updated)

http://forums.retrospect.com/index.php?/topic/150443-retrospect-10-performance-intolerable/ (v10.1, other issues)

http://forums.retrospect.com/index.php?/topic/150379-since-upgrade-to-101-email-notification-with-two-addresses-fails/ (v10.1, fixable but annoying)

 

That said, some longstanding users are reporting improvements from v8 and it seems from the forums that the current team are actively trying to fix issues and work with the users. It would be nice to get a large poll of users' opinions of v10 based on prior experience with v6 and/or v8.

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Yes, a real poll would be nice, Oconchus, but that ain't gonna happen. Are you just expressing a wish or are you looking for user anecdotes (because that's all you could get through this forum)?

 

In case you mean the latter, here's my experience: Retro 9 was much less buggy than any version of Retro 8 including 8.2, which was the only reasonably functional version of 8. Retro 10 introduced new features, particularly Instant Scan, that brought in new bugs, but overall has been working reasonably well for us.

 

Retro 6.1 was overall more stable, less buggy, and more loaded with actually useful features than anything later so far.

 

My opinion only; YMMV.

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Version 6 was actually quite good. A few hickups here and there, but you could get used to it, work around them and get things running quite well.

 

Version 8 was a nightmare. Probably the worst piece of software since Word 6 for Mac.

 

Version 9 was not as bad, but still far from release quality software.

 

Version 10 is ... eh ... much better than 8 and 9, but I still do not trust it. It is like herding cats. There is an everlasting stream of new errors: "But I am sure I checked this setting, now it is unchecked again". "But why are the files in folder X not backed up - there are 20 files there changing every single day, only a random number of them are backed up - sometimes none". "Why does it take 20 minutes to open this window". But also you will also find that quite often it works. But expect to be surprised. Confused. And horrified.

 

If you move from 6 to 10 you will for sure use language not suitable for children more frequently.

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The main thing I would tell anyone is to disable instantscan on all clients with no exceptions. Perhaps it's gotten better but the benefit of reduced scanning times is not made up for by the possibility that it will silently fail to back up critical data at random. You're much better off just turning it off from the start.

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Thanks Charles. It seems a lot of people are having trouble with instant scan. I disabled it server-side but it took me a few days to realize that you need to disable it client-side via a ridiculous hidden option:

http://retrospect.com/en/support/kb/retroisa-advanced-options

 

We bit down and upgraded to v10. There are some nice improvements to the GUI but so far I have spent three days firefighting and trying to get all our backups working again.

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