Moving retrospect 5.x (Mac X) to retropsect 6.5 pc possible ?

[andrada]

 

Would it be possible/easy to move retrospect 5.x of Mac OS X to a pc running retrospect

6.5 ? We are doing this becasue we want to take advantage of the new capability of 6.5 to

backup 2 systems at the same time using 2 different tape drives.

 

I believe I will have to install 6.5 onto the pc and move over the indexes, right ?

 

Rey

[AmyJ]

Please see the following Knowledgebase article:

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=26949

 

Backup sets are not cross-platform at this time.

[paleolith]

Quote:

---

AmyJ said:

Please see the following Knowledgebase article:

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=26949

 

Backup sets are not cross-platform at this time.

 

---

 

The explanation there is a bit misleading. At the end, it says

Quote:

---

Being backwards compatible is a MUST in backup software and thus we must keep our Macintosh format the same. You can imagine the horror of needing to retrieve files from a 6 year old tape to find out that the product you used to do the backup no longer works with your tape because it is too old. Not a good idea.

 

---

 

While this is very true, the explanation ignores the rather obvious fact the you only need to be able to read old backup sets. Dantz could give the Mac version the ability to read the newer backup set format, and change it to create the newer backup set format, while retaining the ability to retrieve from older format backup sets.

 

My primary system is a mainframe whose disk header and backup formats have changed about seven (7!) times in the past 33 years. The software can still read the formats created 33 years ago, even though new tapes are created in the most recent format. Of course, you cannot attach hardware that will read those 33-yo 800BPI tapes to any system running today, but it's conceivable that the tape might have been recopied to new tapes, preserving the format.

 

I'm not saying that it's necessarily important to make backup sets cross-platform. As someone contemplating a change from the Mac version to the Windows version, I do think it's a good idea, but that's independent of what I'm saying here. The point is that the explanation is seriously incomplete, and this does not give me a lot of confidence in Dantz.

 

Edward