Backup Software?

[Gene K]

Recently I purchased an external Firewire connected Maxtor Hard Drive to
be used mainly for backup plus storage of rarely accessed stuff I want
to keep for one reason or another. It is large (200GB) so storage is not
going to be a problem; at least, for a long while.
My question is mainly about backup software. The external came with a
backup program called "Retrospect Express Backup, Version 6" by the
Dantz Development Corp.
Questions:
1. Does anyone have experience with this program? Will it do the job?
2. Is there better backup software? If so, what and why?
I had a crash several months ago which resulted in a complete
reinstallation of the operating system. I had some backup and was able
to recover that but lost some files I cannot recover. That resulted in
the external hard drive purchase which I had been considering previously.
Would appreciate help/comments/advice,
Gene K

 

[Malke]

Recently I purchased an external Firewire connected Maxtor Hard Drive
to be used mainly for backup plus storage of rarely accessed stuff I
want to keep for one reason or another. It is large (200GB) so storage
is not going to be a problem; at least, for a long while.
My question is mainly about backup software. The external came with a
backup program called "Retrospect Express Backup, Version 6" by the
Dantz Development Corp.
Questions:
1. Does anyone have experience with this program? Will it do the job?
2. Is there better backup software? If so, what and why?
I had a crash several months ago which resulted in a complete
reinstallation of the operating system. I had some backup and was able
to recover that but lost some files I cannot recover. That resulted in
the external hard drive purchase which I had been considering
previously.
Would appreciate help/comments/advice,
Gene K

Retrospect is well known. I would go to their website and read about the
program and see what you get with Retrospect Express, such as if this
is a "lite" version of the product. The main issue I would examine is
if Retrospect saves in a proprietary format. I really hate backups
saved in a proprietary format because what if someday you want that
data but don't have the backup program in which you created the backup?
You'll be out of luck.

Malke

 

[Tumbleweed]

Recently I purchased an external Firewire connected Maxtor Hard Drive to
be used mainly for backup plus storage of rarely accessed stuff I want
to keep for one reason or another. It is large (200GB) so storage is not
going to be a problem; at least, for a long while.
My question is mainly about backup software. The external came with a
backup program called "Retrospect Express Backup, Version 6" by the
Dantz Development Corp.
Questions:
1. Does anyone have experience with this program? Will it do the job?
2. Is there better backup software? If so, what and why?
I had a crash several months ago which resulted in a complete
reinstallation of the operating system. I had some backup and was able
to recover that but lost some files I cannot recover. That resulted in
the external hard drive purchase which I had been considering previously.
Would appreciate help/comments/advice,
Gene K

I have no experience of Retrospect, but in addition or instead of that you
may also want to look at a drive imaging program. I use Norton Ghost, there
are others. The idea is to takea complete image of your system drive
(usually C). In the case of a catastrophic error, such as you mention, you
can restore the image back over your corrupted C drive (or maybe onto a new
disk if the disk failed). No need to reinstall OS and all the hassle that
involves!

It helps to have your disk partitioned so that C is relatively small and
contains only applications, with all data on other partitions.