External hard disk backup & system restore

[mgatehouse]

Just purchased an external hard drive + Retrospect 6.0 to run backups to it. Duplicate backups work o.k. First full file backup worked fine. Subsequent attempts at file backup sent the drive into an indefinite frenzy of self-flagellation and crashed Retrospect. Could only escape by unplugging USB cable and rebooting. Found a Dantz KB article which says, blandly, disable Windows XP's System Restore to 'increase backup stability'. Did so and backup now works fine. But System Restore is a rather useful feature of XP, especially when installing new software. I don't want to operate with it disabled.

 

Could someone explain what the problem is? Is Dantz planning to fix it? I probably wouldn't have purchased Retrospect if I had known of this problem.

 

Best wishes,

 

Mike Gatehouse, in Brecon, South Wales, UK

[mgatehouse]

I have now found that I can turn off Windows XP System Restore on just my external hard disk, leaving it active on the C: drive and remaining partitions of my internal HDD. Retrospect still seems to work o.k. on backup to file. That makes the solution much less draconian than the blanket instruction in the Dantz KB to turn off all System Restore.

 

It would be handy if Dantz could evaluate this and post advice accordingly in the KB and in the ReadMe file for Retrospect 6.0., Express and any other affected version. It's particularly relevant for those who purchase Maxtor external hard drives, which come with Retrospect Express bundled.

[AmyJ]

There is conflict between System Restore and Retrospect when writing to hard drives in XP - both programs attempt to access the drive at the same time. Some users experience crashes or slow performance. We are working on solutions.