Next I went to Sources and added the IP address and path to my Drobo 5N share, which went smoothly.įrom there I went to Media Sets and had to create a new “media set” to specify how much space on the Drobo NAS I wanted to use for backups, and how to purge older backups. I made the mistake of using “Is” instead of “Contains”, which still backed up the contents of the folders until I adjusted that. I used “Any of the Following are True” and “Folder, Mac Path” to specify the paths of the files I wanted to exclude from backup (there are a handful of files I needed to exclude from the backups). ![]() Once that was resolved and I successfully activated my subscription, I first needed to take a trip to Preferences and under Rules, create a rule of files I wanted to exclude from backup. ![]() It would be good if Retrospect offered a more prominent installer for Solo on their website. One issue I ran into was when I ran the Retrospect Installer, it installed components that are not included in Solo and actually conflicted with Solo’s operation. Overall the Interface on Retrospect Solo is Mac-friendly and not too complicated, although there is a certain process one should go through in order to successfully backup a Mac. Their support was there every step of the way and resolved all of my issues. Most of the issues I contacted support about were issues of my own doing (by rushing into the configuration), but there were a couple of support issues I wouldn’t have been able to self-resolve. I am glad I went with the subscription (even though I prefer perpetual licenses) for access to support alone. In my case, Solo offered what I needed at a reduced price (Provantage brought the cost down to $30 per year per Mac, and if I ever needed to drop one of the Macs, I could). For those who need to centralize and manage backups or backup Windows PCs, Desktop seems to be the best choice. ![]() Retrospect originally recommended the Desktop version which offers more features and functionality (plus more options for support where one can purchase a perpetual license and a support contract), but it was overkill for my backup needs. I ordered two copies of Retrospect Solo for Mac (version reviewed is 17) using the subscription license (the subscription license offers support and major upgrades included, the perpetual license does not offer support or major upgrades included). Retrospect is now owned by the same company as the Drobo (StorCentric), so the two should play well together. I decided to turn to Retrospect as the backup solution for my Macs to backup to the Drobo NAS (this coupled with Time Machine now gives me two local backups of my data, plus I also use off-site online backups as well). ![]() With that said, I have a perfectly good Drobo NAS sitting on my desk that I would still like to use for backups, even if Time Machine isn’t the best solution for it. Time Machine simply works best with a locally-connected drive. For Time Machine backups, I’ve moved one of my Macs to a Thunderbolt 3 drive, and I plan to move the other one to a Thunderbolt 2 drive by the end of summer. Occasionally, Time Machine can throw a verification error which causes the entire Time Machine backup to be deleted and re-created. However, recent versions of macOS and Time Machine simply do not play well with NAS devices (even Apple’s own Time Capsule NAS drives aren’t playing well with recent versions of macOS Time Machine). It is also handy for file sharing between computers. For years, I’ve used a Drobo NAS (5N) to backup my Macs with Time Machine, as well as I used the Drobo NAS with Macrium when I backed up Windows PCs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |