Is Professional full version bundled with this product?

[inHaliburton]

Hi, I'm a first-time user.

 

 

 

I'm in the market for a backup systems/solution and liked Retrospect from my Mac days (mid-90s). I'm considering a dvd drive or a hard drive. I notice that BUSlink bundle Retrospect with some of their drives. Is it the full Professional version, or will I have to upgrade at additional cost?

 

 

 

What I want to be able to do is--in the event of a total crash--be able to completely restore programs and data quickly, to the latest "save."

 

 

 

I have about 12gb of programs and data on a desktop PC (not a server).

 

 

 

Should I consider tape drives? I had one in my old PC but it was only about 100mb. Are they better/cheaper now?

 

 

 

I'm open to suggestions re MODERN backup solutions.

 

 

 

Here's the link to the drive I'm considering:

 

 

 

http://www.buslink.com/index.cgi?view_product=yes&product_sku=677891122342

 

 

[AmyJ]

The Buslink drives come with either 5.5 or 5.6 Express. The upgrade cost to Professional through Dantz is $49.95. Other retailers may sell the upgrade for less.

 

Quote:

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What I want to be able to do is--in the event of a total crash--be able to completely restore programs and data quickly, to the latest "save."

 

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Depending on what OS you're running, this may not be the best solution for the following reasons:

 

If you are running Win95, Win98 or WinME you have a 2 or 4 gig limit when backing up to hard drive. This limit is imposed by the available drive formats (FAT16 and FAT32). If you are running WinNT, Win2K or WinXP, you can format the drive as NTFS, which has a terabyte limit (which is considerably larger then the drive itself).

 

With the release of Retrospect 6.0, we re-engineered our Disk backup set to include backup to hard disk (formerly limited to removable media such as Zip and DVD-RAM). With Disk backup sets in 6.0 and later, you are not limited because the backup is broken up into smaller chunks of data that do not hit the file size limit.

 

To summarize, if you are running Win95, Win98 or WinME and you have more then 4 gig of data, you won't be able to do a full system backup.

[inHaliburton]

I'm using Windows XP, so I'm okay there.

 

Your quote:

we re-engineered our Disk backup set to include backup to hard disk

End quote.

 

Not sure what this means. Does it mean to save entire disk content in order to restore a newly-formatted drive, which is what I want to be able to do? Or something else?

 

Can you point me to any threads, if any, that describe backup alternatives and media advantages/disadvantages? If not here, perhaps on other sites/forums?

 

Thanks for your excellent information.

[kaikow]

Upgrade priced is lower elsewhere.

Check at Provantage and check price search engines.

[inHaliburton]

Thanks Howard, that's a good source.

 

Can you or anyone advise pro/cons of tape backup vs. hard disk vs. dvd?

[kaikow]

Up until early June 2003, my backup strategy was to use a Travan 4/8GB tape drive on each of my systems.

 

I used ZIP media to backup critical files as I created them.

 

Travan 4 tapes, if you are lucky are $25 each.

A full backup of my main system, using Sonic's BackUp MyPC (BUMP), including verify took about 16 hours last time I did a full backup. Since 5 tapes were required, I had to be available to change tapes for both the backup and verify phase.

 

I got fed up with tape and decided to do the following for the next system I build, or purchase. However, due to an odd set of events, I added the following to my current main system:

 

1. No more tapes!

2. Two external USB, or firewire, hard drives. Each would have a capacity larger than all internal drives together. Only 1 external drive would be connected at a time, to reduce the chance for power sure problems. Indeed, I do not intend to keep either drive connected, or plugged-in, when not being used. This is a do as I say. not as I do, because I've been keeping 1 drive, at time, continuously connected. Note that these drives are both Maxtor 5000LE drives that come with Retrospedt Express 5.6, but I purchased Retrospect Pro 6.5. No plans to use RE 5.6.

3. CD-RW to create Retrospect Disaster Recovery CD. I would have gotten a CD-RW/DVD drive, but my systems do not have the horsepower to use wriable DVD. The cD-RW drive came with Easy CD Creater Basic 5, but I also purchased Nero Burning ROM.

 

A full backup, including verify, to the USB drive (disk backup set) takes abot 6.5 hours. That's a lot better thgan 16 hours and avoids the nuisance of changing tapes, not to mention the cost of the less reliable taspe media.

 

Note that I'm disappointed in Retrospect's performance, as I can use BackUp My PC to perform a full backup in about 3.5 hours.

 

Since I am no longer planning on using tapes, I can use CD-RW to save stuff for off-site storage, or I might use REtrospect to create a tape backup set once in a while.

 

My sister also switched to this strategy, but she was forced because her tape drive died.

 

 

[paleolith]

Quote:

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457845 said:

Can you or anyone advise pro/cons of tape backup vs. hard disk vs. dvd?

 

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If you want real safety, then you need at least two copies of your backups, and you need to be able to store one of them away from your computer -- preferably completely off site. Thus to use HD, you should do as Howard described: get two external HDs. If you get only one, or if it's internal, then you still have some protection but it's much lower level.

 

If you have the money, you can get some incredible capacities in tapes. I don't know how far it pushes now. For high end large systems there is stlil no substitute for tapes. You can put a lot of data on one tape, and you can easily carry a few tapes off site. But the high end drives cost thousands of dollars. The tapes are expensive too, so making spare copies runs the cost up quickly -- but compared with spare HDs, the tapes are fairly cheap and compact, so once you have the drive, it's a very good way to create additional backups.

 

DVD gives you low cost on both media and drive -- DVD+R holds 4.7GB and costs about $2, DVD+RW about $3.25. I figure the price will go down. The low media cost means that you can easily make additional copies -- instead of just two, leave one with a friend occasionally, make an extra disaster recovery backup, etc. But if you're backing up more than a few GB of data, you will have the same problem that Howard described with 4/8GB tapes -- needing to attend the backup to swap DVDs. Attending backups can be a PITA depending on your personality.

 

I've just switched from CD-R to DVD+R in the past week. But my first full backup of three systems only used 11GB, and I expect the incremental backups to stay on the third DVD for several weeks. And I removed a lot of junk from my new system after doing the first backup, so I have even less to back up now.

 

I'm also starting to use a hybrid strategy. My new box came with a 120GB HD, which is six times the size of my old one and probably at least six times what I need. So I'm planning to do backups to the spare space on this disk daily, backing up itself, the two Macs, and a laptop to be added soon. Then I'll do incrementals to the DVDs twice a week, alternating sets. Or I might decide to back up to the DVDs more often. Still in flux. I figure the disk set backups will be good quick light backups and temporary storage for recently lost files, whereas the DVDs will be my off-site backups and long term archives.

 

Edward

[kaikow]

I might offer that tapes are not really less expensive than buying several external hard drives.

 

Tapes go bad a lot more often than do hard drives and tapes are not that inexpensive.

 

For example, currently, I would need to use 5 Travan 4 tapes to do a full system backup, then I'd need 1 or 2 to do incremental backups to that tape back up set. So assuming that one can get a Travan 4 tape for $25 (that's likely a low price these daze), I would need $150-175 of tapes just for 1 backup set, not to mention buying replacement tapes when those go bad, and not to mention the time involved in doing the backup and compare and nuisance of switching tapes. Several sets of tapes would multiply that cost.

 

Note that I am currently using about 20GB of the approximately 64GB capacity of my internal hard drives. As that useage increases, I'd need even more tapes, but the external hard drive has the capacity to already handle that much storage, so the cost is fixed using the external hard drives.

 

With the external hard drive, since it has a capacity greter than my internal hard drives, the time is lower and the nuisance disappears. In early June 2003, I paid $180.03 for each of the two Maxtor 5000 LE drives, about the same, if not less, than 6 tapes would cost. And each drive comes with Retrospect Express, which qualified me for buying Retrospect Pro at a lower upgrade price, which makes the price of the drive efectuvely lower.

 

If I wish to take a backup off-ste, I can always get more drives and take them off-site.

 

Of course, hard drive prices are getting lower as I type this.

For larger systems, a similar strategy might work, as large tape drives are rather expensive.

In some environments, tape might be more cost effective, each situation has to be evaluated on its own.

 

P.S. Yesterday, for the first time, Retrospect saved my arse. I had decided to byte the bullet and install Win 2000 over Win 98 on a multiboot system. Something that MSFT does not allow, but I found a way around it (that's separate and off topic here).

 

After that, I had to re-install some apps to replace Win 98 versions with Win 2000 versions. For one app, I installed the later version, but noted that the earlier version did not get cleaned out of Add/Remove Programs. So I decided to remove both from Add/Remove Programs. When I tried to re-install, and used the same CD-ROM from the earlier version to prove that I had a right to install the upgrade version, which I had just done a few hours earlier, the app would not let me install!

 

Since I had just gone thru the install a few hours earlier , using the same CD-ROM to prove qualification for the upgrade, this made no sense.

 

Fortunately, I had just done a backup a shortly after I did the above referenced install.

 

Finally, I yelled Uncle! In this case, since everything was limited to the C drive, I just booted to the Win 2000 on the G drive, where Retrospect is installed, and Restored the entire C drive.

 

Much to my surprsise, Retrospect figured out that it had to restore only 1019 files (237.9 MB out of the 3GB drive).

 

The only thing I lost was the updates to Windows, IE and Outlook EXpress that I spent several hours downloading with Windows updates. If I had done another backup after that point, I could have saved that time, but who could predict that the other app would suddenly turn on me?

 

[kaikow]

Dag nab it, I forget to mention this.

 

If you do buy a drive that comes with Retrospect EXpress, do not buy the upgrade directly from Dantz, it's less expensive elsewhere.

 

Check for best prices at a price search engine

and at your favorite online vendors. I purchased my drives and Retrospect upgrade at Provantage , they usually have among the lowest prices.