EMC Dantz Retrospect Professional 7

Reviewed by: liqflame

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Highly configurable backup sets,Backs up to a wide variety of different media types,Minimal licensing restrictions on using network drives,Fairly affordable

Weaknesses: Some quirks in user experience when backup does not run successfully. "Disaster recovery" add-on (sounds awesome) is expensive. Might be too complex for some users to wrap their mind around

Overall Evaluation: As an I/T consultant, I have spent a lot of time locating that ideal piece of software to fit whatever my clients' needs may be at the time.DVD RW drives and media seemed an ideal way to inexpensively perform unattended backups when I first started setting them up. 5GB of media for only a couple bucks. In practice, many of the other applications out there for this purpose fell far short of my expectations.Retrospect, however, changed my opinion on backup software that supports writing backup sets to optical media.Retrospect is a full-featured, highly-configurable backup program designed for professionals who need maximum reliability, as opposed to offerings by various disc-burning products that largely target the consumer market.There are, however, a few small quirks in the UI. For example, when a backup does not run for whatever reason (damaged media, wrong disc in the drive, etc) it is easy for the end user to put the program in a mode that defers all scheduled backups until a special button in the program is "un-pushed". This took me quite a bit of time to figure out when one of my clients started having issues.Furthermore, I find "wizards" (the default configuration mode of the program) somewhat annoying in any software, and quickly enabled the advanced mode upon installation.When I saw the amount of configurability, I was a bit overwhelmed, and it took me quite a while to figure out how to set up a fairly simple configuration to my liking. A thorough scan of the documentation is highly recommended.One other small gripe, the disaster recovery add-on sounds really awesome, but costs an arm and a leg. More than 4 times the amount of the program itself. I can understand the pricing for a server-oriented license, but it seems high for home and small business users who are looking for this kind of solution.All in all, I am pleased with its performance. Every option you would expect from backup software is available, and many optical drives have been certified by the developers for use with the program. A full list is available on their web site. The software even tests out your media for compatibility and max reliable write speed before you start backing up.I haven't needed to restore anything yet, but given the thorough validation process available in the app, I have no doubts that it will get the job done when the need does arise.