Retrospect Backup 20.0.1.201

Retrospect Backup is a commercial backup application for Windows and macOS, with server editions also available for Linux. It copies files, volumes, email accounts and networked computers to disks, NAS shares, tape or cloud storage. It keeps earlier file versions and restores anything from a single document to a complete Windows system. Editions range from a single home computer to multi-server business networks, sold as a subscription or a perpetual license.

Sources, sets and scripts

Retrospect Backup organizes every job around three things. Sources are what Retrospect protects: local volumes, favorite folders, network shares, mailboxes and other computers running the Retrospect Client agent. A networked client only needs to be switched on; nobody has to be logged in and no file sharing is required.

Destinations are backup sets (media sets on the Mac), stored on disk or NAS, tape, a single file or a cloud bucket. Each set has a catalog that indexes every file and version. This lets users search old versions without reading the media. A lost catalog can be rebuilt from the backup data.

Scripts tie the two together with selectors (filters by name, date, type and other conditions), a schedule and options. Besides backups, scripts can archive, duplicate a volume, transfer existing backups to another set, groom old data and verify sets.

How progressive backup works

After the first run, Retrospect copies only new or changed files, so there is no choice to make between full and incremental jobs. Each run still records a snapshot of every file and folder on the volume, and restoring that snapshot returns the volume to its state at that backup. Identical files are stored once even when several computers back up to the same set.

For large files that change often, an optional block-level mode compares 2 MB blocks with the previous backup and stores only the changed ones. Retrospect periodically forces a full copy of such a file so a single damaged medium cannot break the chain.

A backup run can also start a new media member, create a fresh set for off-site rotation, or recycle a set by erasing it and copying everything again. The separate Duplicate operation makes a directly readable copy of a disk or folder, but keeps only the latest state with no version history.

ProactiveAI scheduling for laptops

A regular script runs at fixed times. A ProactiveAI script works inside a backup window and decides which source to protect next. It prioritizes overdue and never-backed-up computers. It sets unreachable machines aside until it has tried the rest and puts quicker backups ahead of slower ones. When a laptop joins the network at 9 a.m., Retrospect backs it up then instead of waiting for a set time. Retrospect can also wake sleeping computers for a backup.

Storage groups let ProactiveAI write several sources to one destination in parallel, each volume in its own set, at the cost of no deduplication across those volumes.

Retention and grooming

Retrospect can groom disk sets to delete backup data outside a retention policy, such as the last ten snapshots per volume. Grooming runs when the destination fills or on a schedule, and transfer scripts can move older backups to tape or cloud sets for long-term keeping.

Ransomware protection in Retrospect Backup

Retrospect Backup can make backups immutable with cloud services that support object lock. These include Amazon S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, MinIO, Azure and Google Cloud Storage. The administrator enables the option and enters a number of days. No one, including an administrator, can change or delete any stored version until that period ends. Retrospect backs up files again once they fall outside the window, so immutable sets grow larger.

Anomaly detection compares backups against filters and thresholds set per backup policy. It flags unusual file changes that may indicate ransomware and shows which files changed. Backup sets can also be encrypted with AES-256, and the password cannot be recovered if lost.

Restoring files and whole systems

Restore by snapshot lets the user browse a volume as it was at a chosen backup and pick files, folders or the entire volume. Restore by search finds every stored version of a file across sessions. Separate modes restore databases and mailboxes, and the user chooses the overwrite rule for each restore.

On Windows, Retrospect builds a bootable WinPE recovery image for disc or USB. From it, the user can partition disks and load drivers. They can restore the boot volume with its registry and System State from local media or a Retrospect server.

Retrospect editions

Clients can run Windows, Mac or Linux. Larger setups can add Retrospect Management Console, which gathers status from several Retrospect Backup installations, deploys client agents and sends alerts to tools such as Slack and Nagios.