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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Retrospect: Is it this complicated?

RobinS - Aug 8, 2006 - 12:56 pm

Using Retrospect 6 on OS X 10.4.7 with 1.25 ghz Mini with 1024 mb ram, 2 x 250 gb 7200 rpm IDE hard drives (one on IDE channel with adapter, one on USB 2.0).

I want to have about 10 folders on my destination external USB hard drive. I want my source hard drive to update those 10 folders with new files if they are not there and delete any files that are not on the source drive. This may be called an incremental backup but I'm unsure.

Is there an simple way to do this? Restrospect doesn't seem to cooperate. Should I duplicate? Or does this just erase and reinstall everything? That's a lot of redundant work that I want to avoid, especially with slower USB speeds.

Just found out that there are external Sata enclosures! Should be faster than firewire 800! And they're cheap.

earthsaver - Aug 8, 2006 - 1:47 pm

Did Retrospect come with your hard disk? I've never found it particularly intuitive and have been using Ben Rister's Synk backup utility for a few years. The alternative free way to go is psync and/or PsyncX.

If you simply want to backup everything, I would clone your hard disk to the external using Carbon Copy Cloner and then schedule psync via CCC to synchronize. Synk just happens to have a friendlier GUI, IMHO, and I'd be happy to reopen this question so you can gather backup app recommendations from other techs, if you like, or if you still hope to receive some specialized support on Retrospect, beyond what its developer can offer.

- Ben

RobinS - Aug 10, 2006 - 6:03 am

No, I got it seperately. I was trying Lacie Silverkeeper and even that doesn't seem to be geared towards just backing up changed files. Maybe I need reread the help files but it seems odd that such a simple function should appear hidden. I do read such glowing things on Retrospect though. I'd like to give it a chance now that I have it.

Backing up "everything" would mean movies and that would use up 10 times as much space as I really need.

Is incremental backup the right term for backing up certain files and only the files that have changed, added or deleted?

earthsaver - Aug 10, 2006 - 10:31 am

Yep. That's correct. Let's see if someone else has Retrospect experience to help you. (Synk has been relatively intuitive for defining exclusions and other preferences. Article on MacNN today comparing it to Leopard's Time Machine.)

ScottW - Aug 10, 2006 - 2:02 pm

Robin,

Retrospect is not your friend in this case. What you are wanting to do is mirror or also called "snapshot" of your current configuration from your primary drive to your USB drive. While I have not used the mirror drive functionality of Retrospect, it will either do one of the following:

a) Copy only whole files which have been updated or are new and delete any files so that the two drives are in sync.

b) Recopy the entire contents as if it was doing a brand new copy to provide the sync.

I *highly* recommend using RSYNC. While it might take a quick learning curve because of the command line, it's free and installed on Tiger already. It can sync your files quickly and in the case of large files, say a 100MB file, if you only make a small change and that file then becomes 101MB, RSYNC only has to copy over the 1MB of changed data to sync the file and not the entire 100MB as programs like Retrospect would do.

For example, to mirror a folder from volume "Macintosh HD" to volume "USB Drive" you'd have a line at your terminal window like this:

What that will do is copy the folder "MyFolder" to the backup directory on the USB drive. The spaces in the volume name (or file names as well) would be escaped with a "\" as I demonstrated above.

This will copy any subfolders as well, and you can specify exact files, its really up to you on what you do with this.

Only do this after your sure its all working, as if you go the wrong way with your rsync command, bad things could happen if you add the --delete function. This will delete any files on the destination that don't exist on the source.

So, the above would be like this:

You can even have more fun with Rsync such as ignoring certain files, folders, file types and the whole works. I use Rsync to sync 50GB of data between two cities over the internet, every night. Only about 1-3GB of this data changes daily and it only takes a little time to do all this.