Well, I just wanted to say how sad and exhausted I am after finally having
to call upon my supposedly 'Full Backup' with retrospect.  I'd invested a
lot of time and money - two Sony DAT drives, assorted tapes, setting up the
software itself but when it finally came to it, the system is pretty close
to being a total load of shite.

What would you take 'Full Backup' to mean?  That you can restore your PC to
just they way it was at the moment you did the last backup?  Wrong!  I got
some stupid error message about winnt\system32\config\system not being
found - sure enough it doesnt feature in the backup set at all.

I tried the whole boot-from-disaster-recovery-CD thing again, only this time
isntead of saying it was going to restore c.900MB of files, it was going to
restore just over 2GB of files - remember, this is going through the same
process with the same backup tapes.  Something funny going on there for a
start, if it can find more files the second time.

Still no joy, so I tried a third time!  Yep, a different number of files to
be restored!!

Fortunatley I had another PC with which to search the net for a solution to
this config\system thing, which I implemented and did finally get the thing
up and running but some old software has vanished, my Outlook email accounst
and 'rules' have gone, my Outlook Express 6 newsgroups have all gone and
Outlook Express itself has turned itself into version 5, the folder views
have all changed, my Internet favorites have all gone ... the list goes on
and on.

In short, I'm hugely disappointed with Retrospect.  Does anyone know of a
workaround to its short-comings so I can be better prepared next time?
Clearly, just clicking 'full system backup' and feeding it dat tapes ain't
enough!

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Retrospect does not let you backup/restore certain system files, called the
"System State:, allegedly because of some MSFT spec.
The directory to which you refer is not listed by Retrospect because I
expect that it is considered part of the System State.

Retrospect has options to Backup the System State.
If you did not select that option, then the System State would not have been
backed up.

Ditto for a Restore.
To prevent inadvertent overwriting of the active System files, one must
choose the option to Restore the System state.

Sounds like the option was not selected on Backup, Restore, or both.

--
http://www.standards.com/; See Howard Kaikow's web site.
"ITMA" <mindyourown@business.com> wrote in message
news:410b9fac$1_2@mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com...
> Well, I just wanted to say how sad and exhausted I am after finally having
> to call upon my supposedly 'Full Backup' with retrospect.  I'd invested a
> lot of time and money - two Sony DAT drives, assorted tapes, setting up
the
> software itself but when it finally came to it, the system is pretty close
> to being a total load of shite.
>
> What would you take 'Full Backup' to mean?  That you can restore your PC
to
> just they way it was at the moment you did the last backup?  Wrong!  I got
> some stupid error message about winnt\system32\config\system not being
> found - sure enough it doesnt feature in the backup set at all.
>
> I tried the whole boot-from-disaster-recovery-CD thing again, only this
time
> isntead of saying it was going to restore c.900MB of files, it was going
to
> restore just over 2GB of files - remember, this is going through the same
> process with the same backup tapes.  Something funny going on there for a
> start, if it can find more files the second time.
>
> Still no joy, so I tried a third time!  Yep, a different number of files
to
> be restored!!
>
> Fortunatley I had another PC with which to search the net for a solution
to
> this config\system thing, which I implemented and did finally get the
thing
> up and running but some old software has vanished, my Outlook email
accounst
> and 'rules' have gone, my Outlook Express 6 newsgroups have all gone and
> Outlook Express itself has turned itself into version 5, the folder views
> have all changed, my Internet favorites have all gone ... the list goes on
> and on.
>
> In short, I'm hugely disappointed with Retrospect.  Does anyone know of a
> workaround to its short-comings so I can be better prepared next time?
> Clearly, just clicking 'full system backup' and feeding it dat tapes ain't
> enough!
>
>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]