Last week we ran out of room to write much about Dantz Development's release of Retrospect 5.0, the lack of which, for many people serious about their backups (see our "Backed Up Today?" series of articles on the topic), was the main obstacle preventing upgrades to Mac OS X. First off, I want to explain briefly why we had to wait so long for Retrospect 5.0, and why making it compatible with Mac OS X was much harder than it would appearShow full article

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Last week we ran out of room to write much about Dantz Development's release of Retrospect 5.0, the lack of which, for many people serious about their backups (see our "Backed Up Today?" series of articles on the topic), was the main obstacle preventing upgrades to Mac OS X.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06758>
<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1041>

First off, I want to explain briefly why we had to wait so long for Retrospect 5.0, and why making it compatible with Mac OS X was much harder than it would appear. In Mac OS X, Apple essentially bolted the classic Mac OS on top of a Unix operating system. Although Apple did a generally good job of making this connection invisible to users, the differences between the way the Mac OS and Unix handle files are glaring to an application like Retrospect that needs to be able to restore files exactly as it backed them up. Mac OS files have different attributes and permissions than Unix files, and Mac OS files can even have resource forks, which Unix files lack. Plus, in the Mac OS, the only type of links are aliases, whereas Unix offers several different types of links. Even case-sensitivity is different between the two.

The practical upshot of these differences was that Cocoa (and Unix) applications couldn't generally see the Mac OS attributes and resource forks, and Classic applications couldn't handle the Unix attributes, permissions, and links. The happy medium had to be a specially written Carbon application that had been coded to handle both Unix and Macintosh file information. To address this, Dantz initially released a free Retrospect Client for Mac OS X Preview that worked with a plug-in to Retrospect 4.3 under Mac OS 9 to back up Mac OS X-based machines; it was basically a hack that worked, but wasn't ideal.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06395>

Operating system support was necessary as well, and it wasn't until Mac OS X 10.1.2, released in late December of 2001, that Apple fixed all the bugs that had previously made it impossible to restore a working Mac OS X installation from a backup. Dantz immediately released a free Retrospect 5.0 Preview that ran under Mac OS X and could back up and restore properly. Dantz then spent the last few months doing final testing and packaging, leading up to last week's release of Retrospect 5.0, which can do essentially everything Retrospect users are accustomed to doing, but with Mac OS X as well as Mac OS 9 (plus Windows, though I haven't had time to test Windows-compatibility yet). Aside from this fundamental compatibility with a mixed operating system environment, there are a few welcome changes under the hood that make Retrospect all the more useful. These changes fall into two major categories: internal changes to Retrospect's backup capabilities and changes necessary for Mac OS X.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06678>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06687>

New Under the Hood -- The most interesting of Retrospect's internal changes is the elimination of a design that severely limited the utility of backing up to external hard disks with what Retrospect calls File Backup Sets. In earlier versions of Retrospect, the catalog that stores the names of the backed-up files lives in the resource fork of a File Backup Set; unfortunately, resource forks cannot grow larger than 16 MB. That effectively limited the number of files that could be stored in a File Backup Set to between 60,000 to 75,000, regardless of the size of those files. In Retrospect 5.0, when the 16 MB limit is reached, Retrospect creates a separate .cat file to hold the catalog. These two files must be stored in the same folder and may not be renamed.

With the costs of hot-swappable FireWire hard disks as low as they are, this relatively small change simplifies the use of hard disks as dedicated backup media. Retrospect's EasyScript feature, which helps you build a backup script, now gives you this option as well. For instance, you could buy three 80 GB hard disks for less than $700 total, create a File Backup Set on each one, and rotate between them for a backup system that compares extremely favorably to tape drive systems. A set of 160 GB drives at $400 each would be even more cost-effective. Don't forget about archiving for posterity (I just had reason to recover 400 MB of software from archived backups from 1995 through 1998), but it wouldn't be difficult to remove the drive mechanism from a case, swap in a new mechanism, and store the old one for safe-keeping. More elegant than buying three separate drives would be getting one of Granite Digital's FireVue Hot-Swap Drive Systems, with which you essentially buy only one $230 case plus $30 trays for drive mechanisms that you swap in and out of the case. I haven't tried one, but they sound useful.

<http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg26_ firewireidehotswapdrive.htm>

For people working with very large files, as can happen when editing audio or video, Retrospect 5.0 can now back up files larger than 2 GB. Most people probably didn't run into that limitation before, but lots of people will be pleased to know that Retrospect 5.0 now supports all currently shipping Apple optical drives (see Dantz's Web site for a complete compatibility list). Since Apple uses drives from various manufacturers, the level of support varies slightly - with some drives, Dantz was forced to work around drive firmware errors by requiring that you use CD-R media rather than CD-RW media (the other option was to not support the drive at all). Finally, the Advanced Driver Kit is no longer required for high-capacity tape drives.

<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3? SCREEN=compatibility_list>
<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=osx_ apple_opt_compat_dev>

Mac OS X Changes -- Obviously, the huge change in Retrospect 5.0 is the capability both to run under Mac OS X (10.1.2 and later) and to back up Mac OS X files from Macs running Retrospect Client under Mac OS X 10.1.2 and later. This detail is important - if you back up a Mac that has both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X installed while it's booted into Mac OS 9, Retrospect can't access Mac OS X file permissions; and although it will back up the files, restores of those files won't give you a working Mac OS X system. Likewise, although you can back up files from mounted servers without using Retrospect Client, privileges won't be saved for later restoration.

In short, if you want to back up Mac OS X files such that they can be restored properly, make sure Mac OS X is the active operating system when backing up, and if you're backing up a Mac OS X machine over the network, use Retrospect Client rather than merely mounting the server.

Retrospect Clients have been updated for Mac OS X (Retrospect 5.0 Clients under Mac OS 9 are identical to Retrospect 4.3 Clients other than the version number), and they work only over TCP/IP, not AppleTalk. One tip: if an interrupted backup causes a Mac OS X Retrospect Client to think it's in use when it's not, Command-click the Off button to stop it, then click the On button to start it again. The same trick (toggling Retrospect Client off, then on) works in Mac OS 9 as well, though a normal click on the Off button will suffice.

Dantz also updated Retrospect's interface to support Aqua, updated the default selectors that back up specific sets of files, and changed the location of various files (preferences and logs now live in Library/Preferences/Retrospect and catalog files now default to being stored in the current user's Documents folder). The Retro.Startup extension that launched Retrospect automatically for unattended backup is now called RetroRun under Mac OS X, and it's installed in Library/StartupItems. RetroRun can automatically launch Retrospect even when no user is logged in to a Mac OS X machine. A memory leak has been reported in RetroRun; I'd expect to see an update soon (unfortunately, removing RetroRun from the StartupItems folder won't help for long, since Retrospect recreates it on launch).

Retrospect 5.0 provides a "Live Restore" feature for restoring a entire Mac OS X machine. If it isn't already in a bootable state, you must first install a base Mac OS X system, upgrading as necessary to bring it up to the same version as you're restoring, then install Retrospect, and then perform the restore. I haven't yet had an opportunity to test a Live Restore, though it's an important one. Restoring can prove a little tricky with regard to Mac OS X file permissions; I recommend reading Dantz's Knowledgebase article on the topic and testing some restores in a non-critical situation.

<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3? SCREEN=knowledgebase_article&id=794>

I think it's an open question as to whether you should run Retrospect in Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X if you have the choice. Dantz says one benefit of running in Mac OS X is that Mac OS X's improved memory management makes it possible for Retrospect to back up volumes containing hundreds of thousands of files (previously, Retrospect could run out of memory scanning those files). Plus, Dantz says Retrospect runs faster as a background application in Mac OS X thanks to Mac OS X's approach to multitasking. I won't quibble with those claims, but for non-extreme situations, Retrospect running by itself on an older PowerPC-based Mac under Mac OS 9 may be a more economical and efficient approach, particularly if you have a slow 10 Mbps network that will eliminate any performance gained by using a fast Mac.

Business Model Changes -- There's no question that Dantz has been among the Mac companies that have suffered as a result of Apple's forced march to Mac OS X. The uncertainty surrounding Mac OS X slowed Mac sales to large organizations that take backup seriously and forced Dantz to expend a great deal of back-and-forth effort with Apple just to make Retrospect work properly with Mac OS X. These problems have resulted in Dantz starting to charge for telephone support and making pricing changes in the different versions of Retrospect.

<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=support_ matrix>

There are now four different versions of Retrospect with different capabilities, aimed at different markets:

<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=feature_ comparison_mac>

• Retrospect Express has a subset of Retrospect's full functionality, and it no longer works on Macs running AppleShare IP (or Mac OS X Server). It's aimed at individual users backing up to CD-R or external hard disks. It lists for $80, is available directly from Dantz for $50, and upgrades from previous versions cost $20. It has also appeared in bundles of other utilities in the past; that may happen again.

• Retrospect Desktop also can't run on servers, but it supports tape drives (and tape libraries of up to eight tapes) and all of Retrospect's other features. You can buy Retrospect Clients separately for network backup, but they can be added only if they're in the same Class C subnet, such as 192.168.1.xxx. Retrospect Desktop is sufficient for most small offices. It lists for $250, costs $150 direct from Dantz, and upgrades are $100. I suspect you'll find Retrospect Desktop bundled with most new tape drive purchases.

• Retrospect Workgroup can back up one AppleShare IP or Mac OS X Server machine if it's installed on that Mac, comes with licenses for 20 Retrospect Client workstations (which you can add by DNS name, IP address, or Subnet Broadcast), and supports tape libraries with more than 8 tapes. Larger offices or installations needing to back up very large amounts of data should use Retrospect Workgroup. It costs $500 and upgrades are $200.

• The new Retrospect Server is identical to Retrospect Workgroup Edition, but can back up multiple servers and includes licenses for 100 Retrospect Client workstations, making it appropriate for large organizations. It costs $800, and $350 upgrades from previous versions of Retrospect Desktop and Workgroup are available for a limited time.

The primary advantage of ordering directly from Dantz is that you can download the software and have it immediately, but the downside is that you'll pay a bit more. Look to resellers like TidBITS sponsor Small Dog Electronics for significantly cheaper prices on Retrospect Workgroup and Retrospect Server; other retailers also seemed to have prices slightly lower than Dantz's on Retrospect Express and Retrospect Desktop as well. No resellers had Retrospect in stock yet, though that should change within a week or two.

<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=quick_ order>

French, German, and Japanese localized versions are scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2002. International users can buy an English version today and then upgrade to the corresponding localized product for free when it becomes available.

Initial Impressions -- I've been putting Retrospect, primarily the Server version, through its paces, and although testing backups can be a tedious process given the amounts of data that need to be moved across my 10 Mbps wired Ethernet and (even slower) AirPort networks, I've come to a few conclusions.

First, and most importantly, Retrospect 5.0 works almost exactly the same as Retrospect 4.3 did. There was no learning curve; all of the visible features work as they did in the past. Under Mac OS X, Retrospect asks for administrator passwords at appropriate times, and although its interface looks a little different to support Aqua, I haven't noticed any significant differences.

On initial launch, Retrospect offered to import settings from previous versions; it appeared to do that flawlessly, although I might try a fresh start if I were troubleshooting a problem with Retrospect, since that would seem to be a place where subtle corruption could creep in.

As it turns out, I have been doing a lot of troubleshooting in an effort to help Dantz isolate an internal consistency check error that I and several other people have experienced. I've also seen several situations where my Mac crashed while Retrospect was backing up, although I can't specifically attribute those crashes to Retrospect. Plus, TidBITS Managing Editor Jeff Carlson experienced a problem where Retrospect would back up one of his partitions correctly, but wouldn't compare it. Luckily, as has been the case with Retrospect over the years, these bugs haven't caused any data loss in backups.

<http://support.dantz.com/ubbthreads/ showflat.php?Cat=& amp;Board=Desktopworkgrupx& amp;Number=2630>

This sounds somewhat dire, and although I certainly wish I hadn't experienced any problems, years of using Retrospect have taught me that it's often an electronic canary in the digital mines. For those unfamiliar with the analogy, miners used to bring a canary down into the mine shaft as an early warning system - if noxious gases caused the canary to keel over, the miners knew to get out. Because of its need to operate at the highest possible speeds with unusual storage devices, all without losing a single bit of data, it's not unusual to see Retrospect throw an error when everything else appears to work fine. A friend once told me of a story about a large company that upgraded a Cisco router to new firmware containing a bug which lost one packet in a million. The bug went unnoticed until Retrospect started reporting errors, because although one packet in a million doesn't sound like much, it adds up to a real problem when you're backing up gigabytes of data.

In the end, for many cautious users (myself included), the release of Retrospect 5.0 makes it possible to upgrade primary workstations to Mac OS X. Although a few other backup programs have appeared in recent months, including FWB's BackUp ToolKit (the same as Tri-Edre's Tri-Backup), Qdea's Synchronize Pro X, Randall Voth's Synk, CMS Peripherals' Automatic Backup System, and PSoft's iMsafe, these utilities are appropriate primarily for individual users backing up to media that can be mounted on the desktop (no tape drives). For those who need to back up multiple Macs to any media, including high-capacity tape drives, Retrospect 5.0 is the only option on the Mac that also provides archiving and preserves resource forks, HFS+ metadata, Unix permissions and group ownership, and hard-linked files.

<http://www.fwb.com/cs/btk/main.html>
<http://www.qdea.com/pages/pages-sprox/ sprox1.html>
<http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~rvoth/synkx.html>
<http://www.cmsproducts.com/products/abs.htm>
<http://homepage.mac.com/iMsafe/>

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Tomorrow Dantz Development will release Retrospect 5.1 for Macintosh, the latest version of the company's popular and powerful backup software, which we've relied upon for years to help us recover from lost or corrupted files and damaged hard disksShow full article

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Tomorrow Dantz Development will release Retrospect 5.1 for Macintosh, the latest version of the company's popular and powerful backup software, which we've relied upon for years to help us recover from lost or corrupted files and damaged hard disks. Retrospect 5.1 improves upon the previous version in a number of ways.

<http://www.dantz.com/>

New Features -- Most important is that Retrospect 5.1 now ships with a disaster recovery CD-ROM that can boot a Mac OS X machine, thus eliminating one of the big gotchas that has plagued Retrospect users who back up to removable media. The problem is that Retrospect must be running in Mac OS X to restore permissions properly, but the only way to boot into Mac OS X on a machine whose hard disk had been reformatted was to use an external hard disk. The Retrospect 5.1 recovery CD doesn't drop you into the Finder, but instead runs Retrospect so you can initiate a restore and get back to work without having to reinstall Mac OS X from scratch, then restore the rest of your files with Retrospect.

Unfortunately, the Retrospect recovery CD won't solve everyone's problems. Apple doesn't provide any way for bootable CDs to access a network, making the recovery CD useless for restoring from a Retrospect backup server over your network. It's still worth keeping an external utility hard disk around. (See "Configuring a Utility Hard Disk" in TidBITS-672.) Dantz's license with Apple also doesn't let them include Disk Utility, so you'll have to use the Mac OS X Install CD to reformat or repair a problematic hard disk.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07116>

Note that Retrospect's disaster recovery CD boots into Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, and if you use a slot-loading iMac that hasn't had its firmware updated, you could experience the video problems Geoff Duncan explained in "Update Firmware Before Installing Jaguar!" in TidBITS-653. This isn't an entirely theoretical problem - Alsoft's DiskWarrior 3.0 also comes with a bootable Mac OS X CD, and I've seen reports of the problem occurring when someone used that CD to boot an iMac that hadn't been updated. So make sure to update your firmware if you have a slot-loading iMac!

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06973>
<http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html? artnum=75130>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1997>

Also new in Retrospect 5.1 is a Retrospect Client application that works in Red Hat Linux to let you back up Red Hat Linux machines to your Macintosh- or Windows-based Retrospect backup server. Other flavors of Linux aren't currently supported, but Dantz is working on adding them for future releases.

People who have struggled with Retrospect's lack of support for specific models of optical drives will particularly appreciate Retrospect 5.1's new optical drive auto-configurator. When Retrospect finds a writable optical drive that it doesn't recognize as a supported model, it interrogates the drive by sending command after command and analyzing the responses. At the end of the process, Retrospect will have built up the necessary set of commands to use the drive for backup, assuming of course that the drive passed all the tests sufficiently well (Retrospect will still refuse to back up to drives that don't pass the necessary tests). In some cases, the configurator may allow use of drives that had previously failed Dantz's in-house testing for the preferred packet-writing method; Retrospect 5.1 can now test for and use a track-at-once writing method, which manufacturers reportedly get correct more often, but which doesn't use space quite as efficiently.

Lastly, although we don't have full details, Retrospect 5.1 reportedly builds in numerous bug fixes and customer requests. One feature I'd like to see still isn't present - the capability for a backup set to span multiple hard disks, just like it can span multiple disks for forms of removable media. Now that I'm using Granite Digital's FireVue hot swappable FireWire drive bays with multiple hard disks, it would be great to be able to treat these hard disks as true removable media in Retrospect, because otherwise my backup sets are limited to the size of the disk.

<http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg26_ firewireidehotswapdrive.htm>
<http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg32_ firewiresmarthotswapdrive.htm>

Pricing and Support -- The most notable pricing change for Retrospect 5.1 is that Dantz has stopped selling the low-end $80 Retrospect Express, which lacked a few of the more powerful features available in other versions of the program, such as the capability to customize selectors and work with Retrospect Client software to back up networked computers. The bottom of the product line will now be occupied by the $130 Retrospect Desktop, which comes with licenses to back up two networked computers with the Retrospect Client. Dantz found that enough homes had multiple computers that most people were paying $50 more for network backup capabilities. Upgrades from either Retrospect Express or Retrospect Desktop 5.0 cost $60.

Retrospect Express isn't exactly going away though, and companies that bundle the product with hardware (such as Maxtor including it with their hard drives) or software (like Symantec bundling it with the just-released Norton SystemWorks 3.0) will continue to do so. The bundled version remains at 5.0 for now; it takes longer to slip a revision into bundling situations.

<http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/external/ personal_storage_5000/>
<http://www.symantec.com/sabu/sysworks/mac/>

The more-expensive $500 Retrospect Workgroup and $800 Retrospect Server retain their prices and configurations, with Retrospect Workgroup including 20 licenses for Retrospect Client and Retrospect Server including 100 licenses. Retrospect Server is also necessary for backing up multiple Macs running Mac OS X Server. Upgrades from Retrospect Workgroup 5.0 cost $100, and upgrades from Retrospect Server 5.0 cost $160.

All of these prices are the prices Dantz charges for direct sales; resellers such as TidBITS sponsor Small Dog Electronics offer discounts on new copies and upgrades that range from 30 to 40 percent off the list price. Value-added resellers (consultants who help clients install, configure, and maintain Retrospect) can also sell Retrospect at a discount.

<http://www.dantz.com/en/buy/buy_step1.dtml>
<http://www.smalldog.com/search/x/x/wag125/?z=1& amp;find=Retrospect>

Finally, Dantz has developed a new and significantly cheaper annual support and maintenance plan. For some time now, Dantz has had to charge for tech support calls ($40 per incident for Retrospect Express, $70 for all other versions) because it costs them $30 to have a tech support engineer merely pick up the phone (support via the Web forum remains free). Now people who buy Retrospect Server and Retrospect Workgroup may want to opt for the annual support and maintenance plan. Along with unlimited telephone support, it includes both this upgrade and the next one for free, which makes the $280 cost of the plan for Retrospect Server an easy decision (since upgrading to Retrospect Server 5.1 costs $160, and the next major upgrade will cost at least as much, probably within a year). The plan for Retrospect Workgroup is almost as good, at $200, but it's not particularly worthwhile for Retrospect Desktop, for which the plan costs $180. Dantz expects relatively few consumers to opt for the support and maintenance plan for Retrospect Desktop since it may not pay for itself on the upgrade fees, as it will for the other versions of Retrospect.

<http://www.dantz.com/en/support/>

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Dantz Development's venerable Retrospect backup software is now fully Panther-compatible with an electronic download release that shipped today. Although Retrospect 5.1 would work under Panther, and Retrospect Client ran fine in Panther, Dantz had released a laundry list of situations to avoid and problems in launching and getting the application to run after restarts and system failuresShow full article

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Dantz Development's venerable Retrospect backup software is now fully Panther-compatible with an electronic download release that shipped today. Although Retrospect 5.1 would work under Panther, and Retrospect Client ran fine in Panther, Dantz had released a laundry list of situations to avoid and problems in launching and getting the application to run after restarts and system failures. (We all stuck with Jaguar on our backup servers.)

<http://www.dantz.com/>
<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase& amp;ACTION=KBASE&id=28093>

Retrospect 6.0 could be seen as a maintenance release with a hefty upgrade price tag unless you have one of four special needs: making backup sets larger than one terabyte; backing up to an Xserve RAID; using tape libraries over SCSI or Fibre Channel; or spanning multiple hard drives with a single backup set, something Adam ran into with his current hard drive-based backup strategy. The company also notes speed improvements.

<http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase& amp;ACTION=KBASE&id=28121>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07295>

The software is available for download right now; the boxed version follows in mid-February. Pricing is complicated, as is usual with the number of versions Dantz offers for small, medium, and large networks.

Retrospect Desktop can back up one local Mac and two networked Windows, Mac OS, or Red Hat Linux systems with the included Retrospect Client software. However, it cannot back up computers running Mac OS X Server (either locally or with Retrospect Client), and it doesn't offer the large tapeset, Xserve RAID, or terabyte options. List price is $130 with a $60 upgrade from previous versions.

Retrospect Workgroup and Retrospect Server include client support for 20 and 100 machines, respectively, and all the large data options. However, only Retrospect Server can back up Mac OS X Server systems. Workgroup lists for $500, and an upgrade is $200; Server is $800 with a $350 upgrade.

All versions include Retrospect 5.1 if you want to run Retrospect on a Mac OS 9 system; Retrospect 6.0 can back up older Macs running Retrospect Client software. Also included is a bootable disaster recovery CD, but only with the boxed version, not as part of the electronic-only purchase.

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