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Upgrading from Mac version to Windows


PrimalBrandon

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I'm considering replacing my company's old faithful Mac OS9 Retrospect v5 system with a Windows machine so that we can upgrade to Retrospect v6.5. The terabyte limit on backup sets is just driving me nuts. I know I can't be the first to consider this, but I didn't see any cross-platform questions in the FAQ or forums, so...

 

First, has anyone done this? We have about 35 Mac systems (incl 3 OSX servers) and 5 Windows systems here, so it would be strange to start managing our mostly Mac file systems with a Windows box. Windows has had trouble with file permissions on our OSX servers, and with reading Mac-created filenames (we unfortunately have lots of long names, and names with slashes and asterisks). Would Retrospect for Windows have trouble with these files? Any other potential problems I should know about?

 

Also, is it true that Retrospect 6.5 for Windows would be unable to read our old tape backup sets from the Mac versions? We use Retrospect to archive old files to tape (as well as running overnight backups), so if I'm unable to access all those old archives without booting up a Macintosh and swapping SCSI cables, it will be a *serious* inconvenience... enough to probably make me forget the whole thing.

 

Thanks,

Brandon @ Primal Screen, Atlanta GA

 

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Brandon,

 

We tossed v5 on OSX in favor of v6 on Win. Recently upgraded to 6.5. RS on windows is much more stable, includes many more features and require much less babysitting than v5 on OSX. I've done complete and partial restores of OS9 and OSX clients and partials to OSX servers with no permission or filename problems (we have some long ones too).

 

One problem you mention is serious though - that of RS Win not being able to use catalogs from RS Mac. We've actually left RS v5 installed on its mac and (kind of) repuposed it. SCSI card is still in it. Tapes are piled up next to it. All the catalogs and file backups are still on its hard disk should we need them. One thing we did to alleviate some of the pain was to restore some of the archives from the old RS mac to the new RS pc. Then re-archived them.

 

I highly recommend ditching the mac for Retrospect. Just think of it as the right tool for the right job.

 

my 2c

-mark

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