RP6 sugs--Dup, Disaster, Opt. Features

[awnews]

I've had a chance to play around with Retrospect Pro 6.0 a bit after updating a RetroDB 5.6 system. It's OK but I don't see anything compelling about it (calling it RDB 5.7 would have made sense...) and am disappointed that a few things, some of which I put in as suggestions, were not addressed. I'm putting this in the "Suggestions" section since I would like to see these addressed in a future version.

 

 

 

1) Duplicate--as far as I can tell, Duplicate must still copy files to a volume with sufficient space to hold the entire set of files. I had strongly suggested that Duplicate be expanded to copy to CDR, Zips, etc. that are smaller than the file set. Why? a) So that I could transfer large files sets to other people (without them needing Retrospect) and So that I can open them in the future, on any system, without the need for Retrospect (Normal backup format) in case Retro isn't around or isn't supported on the system. I looked at an App called "Burn to the Brim" to do this but found the I/F too confusing. The idea is for Retro to do as good a job as possible to back the file in a normal uncompressed format (e.g. to CDR), avoiding splitting directories and files unless it has no choice--and even then using an intelligent naming convention and using a standard format (e.g. ZIP?) for mandatory file splits that won't fit on a single backup disk.

 

 

 

 

 

2) Disaster Recovery--this doesn't appear to be any different than the 5.6 version which didn't work for me. My systems tend to have expansion IDE PCI cards and I often run the boot drive off the PCI IDE card for better performance--this requires a driver installation for most systems or it will not boot (don't see drive) or blue-screen (during windows boot). The 5.6, and now 6.0, CD ISO creation allow no provision for including additional drivers so I won't be able to boot from the ISO-image CD unless I unplug cards and rearrange IDE cables during a recovery operation.

 

 

 

*My* disaster recovery is a separate harddrive (usually the same one where I store the file backup) with another copy of the Windows OS and Retrospect. And I've already installed the special PCI-IDE drivers so these will boot in my system(s).

 

 

 

Some day somebody--Microsoft or an intelligent company--will find a way to create and boot a limited but true Windows OS from a CD or DVD (not a DOS shell, etc.)--if it needs scratch space, use a small RAM disk. Macs have booted, into the true MacOS, from CDs for years. And the kicker would be to include system drivers and Retrospect X on this disk for allowing backups and system restores.

 

 

 

 

 

3) If seems like a number of features in the Pro version were left out or, worse, are dangled in front of the user only to announce that they require an additional license code when the user tries to use them. And the fees for these, esp. for home use, are unreasonably high. A couple of examples--Open File Backup (something I see as an issue in some of my logs) and Proactive Backup (would be very useful, even on a small home LAN, for users with laptops). I might even be willing to pay a small extra fee for these features, but I'm not going to pay $600+. It's too bad you didn't keep an "Express" version (equals current Pro) and offer a true home-use Pro version at a slightly higher price.

[awnews]

I'd like to again repeat my suggestion about adding "Duplicate to destinations (mainly CDRs) smaller than source." And I'll also mention the program:

 

 

 

Burn To The Brim

 

http://bttb.sourceforge.net/

 

 

 

as a reference product (I still can't get it to work for me).