Retrospect - 8.1.626

I'm yet another long-time user: well over a decade. But this looks like the year I kiss (or, rather, kick) this product goodbye. I've been using Retrospect 6 to back my home systems up to DVD-Rs because they're cheap, drives are cheap, and I can store the media off-site. Retrospect 6 has a pretty funky and un-Mac-like interface, but, after I'd mastered it, it did the job. I was hoping for better from Retrospect 8. No chance.

To cut to the chase, firstly it does not support the Apple-supplied "Superdrive" in my new iMac. (Actually, it does not support optical drives at all until you follow the instructions in a note on EMC's site that tells you to alter a configuration file using a text editor.) While it's possible to get Retrospect to teach itself about new drive types, it was not clear to me whether I'd managed to do this or not. Well, initially, it said not, but, after I restarted the "engine", it decided that it now knew about my drive. That did not fill me with confidence. I suppose there's some good reason why Retrospect can't just work at once with almost any drive you choose to throw at it, like Toast does, but, whatever it is, it escapes me.

Secondly, trying a test back-up to CD-RWs in an old external drive that is on the supported list, I was bemused by long erase operations on already-erased media, and exasperated by Retrospect filling the discs to less than half their capacity. Behaviour is the same for DVD+Rs, although at least the erase operation(!) is short.

For all I know, the product's really fine for tape and disk back-ups. But the first I don't want, and the second I've got covered with Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine. Perhaps I could do better if I could RTFM. But there isn't one -- just a Quick Start Guide. So, ho hum. It's off to the cloud for me. Or something.