Retrospect for Mac

Retrospect for Mac automatically creates backups, not only of your local Mac, but of networked computers as well. The multiplatform product comes with a 45-day trial but is unfortunately outdated and suffers from a few bugs.

Pros

A multitude of backup features: Retrospect for Mac is bursting with backup options. We completed a password-protected backup of 58GB over Wi-Fi from a MacBook Air to an external hard drive connected to a MacBook Pro in a little over two hours.

Email notifications: You can set the software to email you whenever a predefined scenario occurs. The available scenarios are a successful backup, an interruption due to an error, media requests, and server startups and shutdowns.

Sophisticated rules: Similar to Finder's advanced search function, you can set up rules about which types of files and directories should or should not be backed up. We created a few rules, such as excluding all files older than a certain date and including all files of a given format.

Cons

Cumbersome setup: From the long registration form that you're required to pull up to the product key that you need even for the trial version of the software, it takes quite a bit of effort and time until you're able to start configuring your backups.

Buggy backups: We were unsuccessful in backing up a few specified folders while using the software's backup assistant under Mac OS X Yosemite. The application defaulted to backing up our entire hard drive.

Missing tag support: While we were testing the rules the app is able to create, we were disappointed to discover that there is no support for the tagging feature introduced in OS X Mavericks. The software is still using labels, which are completely separate from tags and are available only on machines running OS X Mountain Lion and prior.

Bottom Line

If you're looking for a Time Machine-like app that will let you back up what you want where you want without any hassles, we do not recommend that you use Retrospect for Mac since it takes a lot of effort to set up something that should be very straightforward. The only scenario where we would cautiously recommend the application is if you have a server and several computers that you want backed up to it.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Retrospect for Mac 11.5.3.103.

• Backup and recovery, data archiving, and data duplication
• Last updated on 05/21/20
• There have been 1 updates within the past 6 months