General unhappiness with Retrospect 8; ot

[klubar]

We've been a Retrospect users for more than 20 years, starting back in the Mac days.  It used to be a great program, but I have to say that the quality of the software and support has good dramatically downhill. We're currently using Single Server 8.1.0 (266) and it's been nothing but one minor problem after another.  The upgrade to from 8.0 to the required beta version wasn't automatic but was required--we had to  manually go to each machine to install it; then when 8.1 came out we had to repeat the same process. The prescan adds considerable overhead (and is always gets marked as dirty anyways) that we've turned it off.

 

For months now the E-mail  notification has been broken (you'd think that someone would have checked it before shipping the software). Support's answer to the issues is "tough-we know about the problem and we're fix it whenever we feel like it".

 

Grooming catalog sets does not work reliably enough to be trusted for critical backups (aren't all backups critical?).  We've given up on grooming and just do recycle backups every three weeks.  Why can't Retrospect get grooming right (or just drop it, if it doesn't work).

 

We've recently encountered a problem with errors 106 in a previously working backup script.  After several hours, surprise support requested that we rebuild the catalog. Of course this didn't work.  I tried to update my support case this morning, and the support system was broken (I guess that's one way to keep those pesky customers from complaining).  I'm sure the answer will be groom (which takes days and never works).  It doesn't seem like support wants to solve any issues, but instead just wear you down with silly (and time consuming requests) -- have you tried reinstalling the OS, reformat the drive, more the computer to a sunnier spot?

 

Our ASM "support" contract is up, and 

 

 

[dan.jordan]

"Rebuild the catalog" has unfortunately been a standard tech support reply for years, but rebuilding the catalog can be a very time-consuming "solution".  I suspect there is something foundational about the product that explains such problems and that the product would require a substantial rewrite to escape such problems.  I've said for six or eight years that the product has good potential but for that potential to ever be realized certain basic problems with the product need to be addressed.  Unfortunately the (various past and present) owners of the product never get beyond the first stumbling block, which is to communicate with their customers that they believe in their own product, that they understand its problems and what they hope to do about those problems, and when.    I have this image in my mind of a company that, behind the scenes, is and has been a boat adrift,  and that they have yet to acquire the managerial expertise to get their boat tacking true.  This company needs a regular newsletter to its customers to keep them from losing hope and jumping ship.

[johnnymacgo]

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 This company needs a regular newsletter to its customers to keep them from losing hope and jumping ship.

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Agreed. And if things don't start looking better on V8.1 we are going to start looking at Microsoft's DPM.

[pronto]

We've been a Retrospect users for more than 20 years, starting back in the Mac days.  It used to be a great program, but I have to say that the quality of the software and support has good dramatically downhill.

 

We lost the hope that Retrospect will come back to an efficient application. Since EMC took over the ownership the problems increases more and more without beeing fixed. We had a lot of service calls and not a single one became closed satisfying. And Roxio picked up where EMC had last finished. Until now we were able to deal with all this problems more or less but we are still evaluating Archiware because it should be pritty faster and also the price is in the meantime in a reachable area...

 

Bye Tom