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Home > Archive > Backup Software > June 2005 > help with Retrospect or replace it with what?
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help with Retrospect or replace it with what?
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| Maxine G 2005-06-18, 5:46 pm |
| I have a Windows ME system, and external SCSI VXA-1 tape drive and
Retrospect 6.0.206. For years I ran Retrospect backups with no problems.
Several months ago I started having problems with crashes in the middle of
backing up. These take the form of either freezes or blue screens.
I upgraded the tape drive firmware and reinstalled Retrospect. I got a few
successful backups and then the crashes started again.
My husband has no problem using the tape drive with his Mac.
I downloaded a trial of Novastor backup and it worked just fine with the
drive. But the trial has expired.
So I don't think there's anything wrong with the drive since it works with
Novastor and on the Mac.
I really don't want to re-install the OS, and eventually I'll be clean-
installing XP on a new disk.
In the meantime I need a backup solution on my existing system. I'd prefer
to use Retrospect if I can, since I already own it. But if I can't get that
to work, I'd like to find a free or inexpensive replacement.
I don't need a lot of features, just good reliability. Disaster recovery
would be nice, but not absolutely essential.
Thanks in advance for suggestions.
-Maxine
--
mgusenet at pcg dot net
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| Howard Kaikow 2005-06-18, 5:46 pm |
| u have an old retrospect version, 6.5.350 is the latest for version 6, and
version 7 has been released.
see what updates u can download from the dantz web site.
--
http://www.standards.com/; See Howard Kaikow's web site.
"Maxine G" <mg@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:Xns967962596562Emgusenetatpcgdotnet
@64.164.98.6...
> I have a Windows ME system, and external SCSI VXA-1 tape drive and
> Retrospect 6.0.206. For years I ran Retrospect backups with no problems.
> Several months ago I started having problems with crashes in the middle of
> backing up. These take the form of either freezes or blue screens.
>
> I upgraded the tape drive firmware and reinstalled Retrospect. I got a few
> successful backups and then the crashes started again.
>
> My husband has no problem using the tape drive with his Mac.
>
> I downloaded a trial of Novastor backup and it worked just fine with the
> drive. But the trial has expired.
>
> So I don't think there's anything wrong with the drive since it works with
> Novastor and on the Mac.
>
> I really don't want to re-install the OS, and eventually I'll be clean-
> installing XP on a new disk.
>
> In the meantime I need a backup solution on my existing system. I'd prefer
> to use Retrospect if I can, since I already own it. But if I can't get
that
> to work, I'd like to find a free or inexpensive replacement.
>
> I don't need a lot of features, just good reliability. Disaster recovery
> would be nice, but not absolutely essential.
>
> Thanks in advance for suggestions.
>
> -Maxine
>
> --
> mgusenet at pcg dot net
| |
| (PeteCresswell) 2005-06-18, 5:46 pm |
| Per Maxine G:
>I really don't want to re-install the OS, and eventually I'll be clean-
>installing XP on a new disk.
Looking at my notes from prior builds, I find that a build takes me at least six
manhours. An hour or so to get the base system up with MS Office and my news
reader connected to the Internet - and then at least four hours of nickle-dime
stuff over the next three weeks installing this and that as the need arises.
What I've gone over to - yet untested under stress - is keeping a little
notebook and taking periodic system images to DVD or an external HD.
Part of that strategy involves obsessively keeping data on a separate "Data"
drive - i.e. zero data on C:.
I'm up to image #15 on my latest build - with an image after each 1-3 installs
and a few notes in the book telling what's been added to each image.
My hope is that when things get finally flakey, I can revert to an earlier image
(only takes about 10 minutes to do that) in a controlled manner and then
re-install what needs tb re-installed depending on the vintage of the image.
--
PeteCresswell
| |
| Maxine G 2005-06-19, 5:47 pm |
| "Howard Kaikow" <kaikow@standards.com> wrote in
news:d91tbt$4f9$1@pyrite.mv.net:
> u have an old retrospect version, 6.5.350 is the latest for version 6,
> and version 7 has been released.
> see what updates u can download from the dantz web site.
>
Thanks. It looks like I can upgrade to 7.0 for $129. I don't see options
for any intermediate upgrades. I was really hoping for a less expensive
solution, especially since the version I had worked great for a long time.
--
mgusenet at pcg dot net
| |
| Curious George 2005-06-20, 2:46 am |
| On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 16:48:57 GMT, Maxine G <mg@nospam.com> wrote:
>"Howard Kaikow" <kaikow@standards.com> wrote in
>news:d91tbt$4f9$1@pyrite.mv.net:
>
>
>Thanks. It looks like I can upgrade to 7.0 for $129. I don't see options
>for any intermediate upgrades. I was really hoping for a less expensive
>solution, especially since the version I had worked great for a long time.
http://www.dantz.com/en/support/updates.dtml
| |
| Maxine G 2005-06-20, 2:46 am |
| Curious George <cg@email.net> wrote in
news:ngicb1pcd67vcnkoilv7lfie81bt2ribsb@
4ax.com:
> On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 16:48:57 GMT, Maxine G <mg@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> http://www.dantz.com/en/support/updates.dtml
>
>
Thanks. It looks like I already have the latest 6.0 upgrades. Sigh.
-Maxine
--
mgusenet at pcg dot net
| |
| Curious George 2005-06-20, 2:46 am |
| On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:25:17 GMT, Maxine G <mg@nospam.com> wrote:
>Thanks. It looks like I already have the latest 6.0 upgrades. Sigh.
>-Maxine
Where do you stand as far as the system's maintenance i.e. scandisk,
registry corruption, SFC, uninstallation of unessential SW & new HW
(since Backup stopped working), etc?
How do you feel about backup of data files over the network to the VXA
connected to the Mac & doing the clean XP install now? I'd add
incremental images of the system drive to the backup routing at that
point if I were you.
| |
| Maxine 2005-06-20, 5:52 pm |
| Curious George <cg@email.net> wrote in
news:f0qcb1551o976o6h6m0h622vkiufe5d673@
4ax.com:
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:25:17 GMT, Maxine G <mg@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Where do you stand as far as the system's maintenance i.e. scandisk,
> registry corruption, SFC, uninstallation of unessential SW & new HW
> (since Backup stopped working), etc?
>
> How do you feel about backup of data files over the network to the VXA
> connected to the Mac & doing the clean XP install now? I'd add
> incremental images of the system drive to the backup routing at that
> point if I were you.
>
Great questions. Thanks.
1. I run scandisk and Norton utilities frequently, so that's okay.
2. Registry corruption certainly seems possible. How do I find out?
Would Norton tell me that?
3. Uninstallation of unessential SW is a good idea. I'll definitely try
that.
4. What do you mean by new HW?
5. I guess I could try network backup to the Mac, but it would be pretty
inconvenient on any regular basis.
6. It'll be a little while before I do the clean install of XP.
7. What do you mean by "incremental images of the system drive"?
-Maxine
| |
| (PeteCresswell) 2005-06-20, 5:52 pm |
| Per Maxine:
>7. What do you mean by "incremental images of the system drive"?
Install the bare-bones XP system.
Take an image. This is incremental image #1.
Install your newsreader, maybe MS Office, get the thing connecting to the
inernet.
Take an image. This is incremental image #2.
....and so-on and so-forth every few installs.
Keep notes on what installs are in what image.
When it finally starts acting weird sometime next year, you'll probably just
drop back to your latest image - but it's nice to have the others in case one of
the installs somewhere between bare-bones and latest turns out to be causing
problems.
A lot of people use "Ghost" to do the imaging.
I use something called "Image".
Can't recall the publisher. About twenty bucks.
--
PeteCresswell
| |
| Howard Kaikow 2005-06-21, 7:54 am |
| I suspect that you can qualify for the upgrade version.
get it at a place such as www.provantage.com, do not buy directly from
Dantz.
--
http://www.standards.com/; See Howard Kaikow's web site.
"Maxine G" <mg@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:Xns967A63EED26Amgusenetatpcgdotnet@
64.164.98.7...
> "Howard Kaikow" <kaikow@standards.com> wrote in
> news:d91tbt$4f9$1@pyrite.mv.net:
>
>
> Thanks. It looks like I can upgrade to 7.0 for $129. I don't see options
> for any intermediate upgrades. I was really hoping for a less expensive
> solution, especially since the version I had worked great for a long time.
>
> --
> mgusenet at pcg dot net
| |
|
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| Curious George 2005-06-21, 5:47 pm |
| On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 17:04:05 GMT, Maxine <mg@nospam.com> wrote:
>Curious George <cg@email.net> wrote in
> news:f0qcb1551o976o6h6m0h622vkiufe5d673@
4ax.com:
>
>
>Great questions. Thanks.
>
>1. I run scandisk and Norton utilities frequently, so that's okay.
Good
>2. Registry corruption certainly seems possible. How do I find out?
>Would Norton tell me that?
I don't thing Norton really does this but haven't used it in a while.
There are separate 3rd party utlities & a MS one that deals with
corruption & conflicts in ME & 98. Frankly, I'm not so sure how well
they actually do this so I don't have good recommendations.
One thing you may consider in the future is making a backup of the
registry after major changes (you can backup & restore using the
command line outside of windows).
Also ME has new features that make it less stable. You could try
scaling it down to see if it makes a difference and you could find the
conflict along the way.
>3. Uninstallation of unessential SW is a good idea. I'll definitely try
>that.
OK
>4. What do you mean by new HW?
New Hardware. Have there been any hardware changes?
>5. I guess I could try network backup to the Mac, but it would be pretty
>inconvenient on any regular basis.
Right. I just mean a one time thing so there is no loss when you
switch to XP
>6. It'll be a little while before I do the clean install of XP.
>
>7. What do you mean by "incremental images of the system drive"?
Pete described it pretty well. Acronis & V2i Protector are some other
options to consider. I usually use Acronis.
If you do this you want to keep the "system" ; the OS and installed
applications on separate volumes as your user data. The idea is if
there is a problem (whether small or large) you can do a quick bare
metal restore to a known good configuration without disturbing your
documents and other data. You want to backup these image files onto
tape as well as having an online or CD/DVD version somewhere.
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