Possible to run Retrospect 6 and 8 on the same hardware?

[theboyk]

Hello.

I'd like to test Retrospect 8 for a possible upgrade from Retrospect 6 and I'd like to test on the same hardware that it will be running. So, I'm wondering if anyone knows if Retrospect 6 and Retrospect 8 can exist on the same machine?

Thanks,

Kristin.

[Maser]

While I've not done it recently, I *have* done it in the past and the answer would be "yes you can".

 

However, Retrospect 6 is not certified to work with Mac OSX 10.6.x (and I've seen some obvious bugs with it), so as long as you stick with 10.5.x -- you should be able to safely run both.

 

 

And, remember, Retrospect 8 can not (currently) read old Retrospect media sets, so you have to treat 6 and 8 as two completely separate products (with the same name).

[CallMeDave]

I'm wondering if anyone knows if Retrospect 6 and Retrospect 8 can exist on the same machine?

 

Retrospect 6 software and Retrospect 8 software are completely independent of one another, and will not interact with each other.

 

That's not to say that actions taken by one can't impact actions taken or attempted by the other; two program's can't write to DVD at the same time, for example, or one can't be reading a tape and expect the other to read it at the same time, etc.

[rhwalker]

You will have to stop the Retrospect 8 engine if you want to use Retrospect 6 (so that the Retrospect 8 driver isn't competing with Retrospect 6), and you will have to quit Retrospect 6 and ensure that it doesn't launch and try to do backups while Retrospect 8 is running (again, competing drivers).

 

Also, there might be some issues with the Retrospect clients needed by each - there's never been an official compatibility matrix for the Retrospect client versions, but it's been requested many times over the past two years.

 

With those cautions, yes, they can coexist.

 

It's possible to write a shell script to start/stop the Retrospect 8 engine at appropriate times, and to have that shell script be called by the Retrospect 6 "Retrospect Event Handler" as appropriate.

 

Russ