The EMC Corporation Retrospect 7.5 for Windows Professional makes the backup process so simple you will have to work hard to find an excuse not to do it. Installation is easy and takes a matter of minutes. After you install Retrospect, you can use the Backup Wizard to perform an immediate backup of your files, or to schedule a backup for later.

For each backup, you can back up selected files or file types, everything on your computer, or everything on your computer and any computers on your network. You can back up files to a tape drive if you have one, to a CD if your backup is small enough, to a DVD, to another hard drive on your computer, or to a hard drive on the network.

In addition to performing an immediate backup, you can schedule backups at a specific time every day, or select certain days, such as Monday through Friday, if you're using Retrospect in an office setting.

Other options include encrypting the backup with a password, to protect your data, and compressing the backup, to save storage space, although this will slow down the performance of the backup.

Of course, a backup is only half of the process; if you should need the files in a backup because of a system crash or other problem, you won't want to spend a lot of time waiting for them. With Retrospect it's as easy to restore files as it is to back them up. You can restore all files, files from a specific point in time, or specific files from one or more backup sets. You can also restore one or more mailboxes or one or more databases from any backup set.

Other features include Disaster Recovery, which you can use to create a bootable CD, so that you will be able to boot your computer in a worst-case scenario. If you buy a new computer, you can use the Duplicate feature to move your files from your current computer to the new one.


Pro: Retrospect makes the backup and restore process as easy as it gets.
Con: The purchase price may seem a little dear for home users, but it's low compared to the risk of losing irreplaceable data, such as digital family photos, tax records, or other important or sentimental files.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
EMC Corporation
176 South Street
Hopkinton, MA 01748
508-435-1000
http://www.emcinsignia.com


Minimum requirements (PC):
System Requirements for Windows Computers that Run Retrospect
Intel Pentium class processor (800 MHz recommended)
256 MB RAM (512 MB or more recommended)
Hard disk with 500 MB free
Network backup requires TCP/IP networking
Retrospect Disk-to-Disk: Windows NT 4.0 Workstation or Server (SP6 or greater); Windows 2000 Professional, Server, or Advanced Server (SP2 or greater); Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition; Windows Small Business Server 2000/2003; Windows XP; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Retrospect Professional: Windows XP, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 98/Me
Supported file systems: NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, CDFS, UDF

System Requirements for Windows Clients*
Intel Pentium class processor
Windows XP, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation (SP6 or greater), Windows 95/98 SE/Me
Supported file systems: NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, CDFS, UDF

System Requirements for Macintosh Clients*
PowerPC processor
Mac OS 7.1 or later, Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later
Supported file systems: HFS, HFS+

System Requirements for Linux Clients*
Intel Pentium class processor
Red Hat Linux 7.3, 8.x, 9.x
SUSE LINUX 8.0, 9.2, 9.3
Supported file systems: ext2, ext3, reiserfs v3

Supported Backup Devices
Tape drives (Professional edition only. Disk-to-Disk edition does not support backups to tape.)
Local hard disks
SCSI/ATAPI/USB/IEEE 1394 Writable CD/DVD drives
Removable disks including REV, Zip, DVD-RAM, MO, and SuperDisk (LS-120)
* Disk-to-Disk edition requires the purchase of client licenses to protect client computers