What's New in Retrospect – Retrospect Backup 19 + Retrospect Virtual 2022 + Retrospect Cloud Storage

FAQ on Retrospect for Mac 9.0
JG Heithcock

mayo 17, 2012

JG Heithcock is GM at Retrospect and has eighteen years experience in the storage and backup industry.

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A Retrospect reseller partner from France asks:

The WebDAV protocol in Retrospect 9 for Mac is great, but why didn’t you keep the FTP protocol that was present in Retrospect 6?

We didn't add FTP support to Retrospect 9 for Mac because SFTP/FTP is just not a good protocol for backups. For example, when performing a restore from FTP backups, it's not possible to start reading data from the middle of a container file—the FTP protocol doesn't support mid-point file access—so Retrospect would need to download the entire container file just to restore a single file from the backup. As a result, Retrospect 6 needs to write much smaller container files, which generates additional overhead and complexity, and reduces performance.

When we decided to pursue WebDAV for our Stage I Cloud Storage Plan, there were three main reasons:

  1. WebDAV is available on all the major platforms we support.
  2. WebDAV runs over port 80, which makes it zero-configuration with regard to networking, routers, firewalls, etc.
  3. Apple has standardized on the WebDAV protocol for its iDisk, and iOS file sharing protocols.

Will Retrospect 9.0 restore version 6 backups?

Retrospect is archival backup software, and it's important that our customers be able to restore data written with previous versions. Because of the significant differences between how today's Intel processors and the Retrospect 6-era PowerPC processors address storage memory locations, Retrospect 9 must recatalog version 6.1 Backup Sets before it can restore from them. This process can be time consuming, so we are investigating ways to provide a faster option in the future, hopefully one that works for version 4 and 5 Backup Sets, too.

Can Version 9 restore backups made with WIN version 7.7?

Yes, in fact Retrospect 9 uses the same Catalog file format as the Windows version, and they even share the same engine under the hood, so to speak.

Does Retrospect support specific hardware (Tape Libraries, DVD, DAS and Network storage etc)?

Retrospect supports a variety of hardware. Devices like hard disk drives, flash drives, and network-attached storage are supported through the operating system on which Retrospect is running. Retrospect does include support for a variety of optical media, from CD through Blu-ray, but we're slowly moving away from optical as a primary backup medium. Tape drives and libraries are supported with our own Retrospect-optimized drivers, allowing Retrospect to directly access and control these devices without the need for specific Windows or Mac device drivers. We work directly with the tape drive and library robotics companies to create these drivers. When we ship maintenance releases and new versions of Retrospect, we include support for new tape storage devices.

Can Version 9 restore backups made with WIN version 7.7?

Yes, in fact Retrospect 9 uses the same Catalog file format as the Windows version, and they even share the same engine under the hood, so to speak.

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