Retrospect for Mac

backup and recovery software for the Mac provides individuals, home office, small office, small and midsize businesses, and branch offices with the reliability, ease of use, power, and flexibility they need to protect critical data on their Macs and Windows PCs and servers. EMC Retrospect includes a state-of-the-art Mac user interface and enterprise-level features — including remote management of one or more backup servers and disk-to-disk-to-tape backups — at a fraction of the cost of other products. With more than two decades of field-tested expertise and millions of users worldwide, EMC Retrospect is the most trusted name in Mac backup.

Whether you are protecting photos of your company picnic or your business financial data, Retrospect for the Mac will give you the peace of mind knowing your critical files are backed-up and secure. Retrospect for Macintosh runs on a Macintosh backup computer and protects networked servers, desktops, and notebooks running the latest Macintosh operating systems, as well as desktops and notebooks running Windows and Red Hat Linux.

The EasyScript wizard, intuitive graphical user interface, and automatic backup device recognition make it easy to set up backups that run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule, and during a specific time frame. Retrospect's self-adjusting operations further ensure computers are never starved of protection. Servers, desktops, and notebooks are recognized when they connect to the network and re-prioritised if they were unavailable or could not be backed up within a previous time period. Backups can also be set on a fixed schedule. To prevent wasting media and time, filters allow administrators to exclude a variety of information during backups, including music and movies.

Fast, reliable, secure backups
Retrospect's patented progressive backup technology accelerates backups and reduces storage costs by copying only new or changed data since the previous backup. Retrospect recognises identical files that reside on multiple desktops and laptops and backs up just one copy. Data compression further minimises backup storage consumption. Retrospect verifies all backup content, not just file name and size, to avoid costly surprises. To protect against unauthorized access, Retrospect provides fast SimpleCrypt or strong DES data encryption on the backup media.

Smart Restores
Retrospect's patented technology enables fast, reliable restores of individual files, directories, or entire file systems with unparalleled accuracy. Retrospect compiles a complete list of files and folders prior to each client backup. Retrospect references the appropriate list and restores only the exact data necessary to return the computer to a particular point in time. Other software applications restore an entire full backup and overlay subsequent incremental backups, resulting in lengthy recovery times and unwanted files that were previously deleted, renamed, or moved. With Retrospect, you recover only data that's needed, eliminating confusion and potential mistakes.

Backup to disk, tape or CD/DVD
Retrospect provides the flexibility to leverage disk, tape, or CD/DVD devices to optimise backup and recovery performance, cost efficiency, and restore capabilities. To guard against media failure or disaster, Retrospect makes it easy to create and manage multiple sets of backup data. Retrospect also uses a quick incremental backup to update tapes brought on-site, avoiding the need for new full backups and simplifying media rotation policies.

Bare metal restore
Retrospect delivers fast, efficient bare metal restore capabilities for your Macintosh computers. During the course of performing backups, Retrospect gathers all necessary information to completely restore a computer, even if it has become unresponsive. Use the Retrospect product CD to start the computer and activate Retrospect. Then restore the operating system, applications, application settings, data, and user preferences. Retrospect saves countless hours of software installation, system configuration, and downtime costs. Whether you need to recover a file or folder, take a computer back to a prior point in time, or restore a computer that has failed completely. Retrospect has you covered.

How Retrospect works

Retrospect uses a backup archival method that ensures backed up files are not deleted or written over until you request it. That way they stay on the disk, tape, CD/DVD disc, or wherever you stored them, indefinitely. This ensures that your files are available if you ever need to restore them. This is an important benefit of Retrospect not found in “disk mirroring” software used for backups. For example, lets say you have been working on an important document every day for the past month and you discover you have been making terrible mistakes for the past week. If you have been backing up every day with Retrospect, you’re not limited to restoring from the most recent backup, rather you can retrieve a version of the file from a week ago (or any point in time it was backed up). Retrospect uses a catalog file (usually stored on your hard disk) to keep track of the different generations of modified files in a backup set. The catalog lets you quickly search for files without having to actually search the backup media itself.

Retrospect provides a number of ways to protect and restore your data. There are two basic categories of operations you can perform with Retrospect: immediate operations and automated operations. For example, if you launch Retrospect, click the Immediate tab, then click Backup, you have taken the first steps in creating an immediate operation. If you make a script to do the same backup on a specific schedule, that is considered an automated operation.

All of the operations in Retrospect, whether immediate or scripted, require a source and a destination. For a backup, the source is generally a hard drive or a folder on a hard drive (Retrospect calls these volumes and sub-volumes respectively). The destination is generally a backup set stored on backup media (disks, tapes, CDs, etc.).

Retrospect for Macintosh Editions

Retrospect Multi Server Unlimited Clients is designed for small and midsize businesses and branch offices, and departments in large organizations protecting more than one server. Retrospect Multi Server runs on a Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server computer and provides licences to protect an unlimited number of networked Mac, Windows, and Linux servers, desktops, and notebooks. Annual Support and Maintenance is included with this product.

Retrospect Single Server Unlimited Clients is designed for small and midsize businesses, branch offices, and departments in large organizations protecting one server. Retrospect Single Server runs on a Mac OS X server and provides licences to protect an unlimited number of networked Mac, Windows, and Linux desktops and notebooks. A server client licence can be purchased to protect an additional networked Mac, Windows, or Linux server. Annual Support and Maintenance is included with this product.

Retrospect Single Server 20 Clients is designed for small and midsize businesses, branch offices, and departments in large organizations protecting one server. Retrospect Single Server runs on a Mac OS X server and provides licences to protect up to 20 networked Mac, Windows, and Linux desktops and notebooks. A server client licence can be purchased to protect an additional networked Mac, Windows, or Linux server.

Retrospect Desktop 3 User is designed for individual users, home offices and small offices. Retrospect Desktop 3-User protects a single Mac desktop or notebook, or a small network of Mac, Windows and Linux desktops and notebooks. This product is available with or without Annual Support and Maintenance.

You are here:: Home>EMC>Retrospect>Macintosh