Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!pyrnj!esquire!baumgart From: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Re: Fastback II 2.1 problems? Summary: Retrospect recommendation Message-ID: <2198@esquire.UUCP> Date: 31 Jul 90 13:51:07 GMT References: <6652@helios.TAMU.EDU> <1990Jul26.083232.14547@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us> Sender: news@esquire.UUCP Reply-To: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) Organization: Davis Polk & Wardwell Lines: 38 In-reply-to: alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) In article <1990Jul26.083232.14547@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us>, alex@grian (Alex Pournelle) writes: >P.S. Comments from Retrospect users are welcome; I don't have a copy to >compare. Besides, when I back up people's systems, F-B seems by far the >more popular (not to say reliable) choice. SUM Backup seems most >reliable, but it won't back up by folder name. I switched from FB to Retrospect and am very happy that I did. I, too, suffered from occasional crashes in FastBack (running under Finder with no INITs, so INIT conflicts certainly weren't the problem), both while backing up and restoring. Crashing while restoring was unsettling, to say the least... :-( Retrospect is a pleasure to use, and has the additional benefit of allowing true archiving, not just backing up. FB has no notion of multiple archives; in fact, the program seems to be designed so that there is no way of maintaining multiple archives for a single volume. Retrospect is not without problems, though. Its user interface for selecting certain files but not others is certainly not intuitive, though it can be learned. And it handles file verification (reading back the backup and comparing to the source) in a very safe, but time consuming way for floppies, since in all cases it starts at the beginning of the backup session and reads back each file in turn. Makes sense for tapes, certainly, but not really for floppies. Also, certain operations are a tad slow on a Plus, but acceptable. Scanning an archive and matching files (to see which need to be backed up) can take a while on a Plus if you have a large disk. Window updating is also a little sluggish on a Plus. But it seems rock solid and very flexible, and works very nicely under Multifinder. I don't regret for a minute switching from FastBack. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman