Neither does 33 GB (my VXA drive - which wasn’t cheap when I bought it).
These days, the only tape drive tech with enough capacity for a modern computer (typically between 512GB and 2TB of storage) is LTO:
LTO-1 → 100 GB uncompressed per tape
LTO-2 → 200 GB
LTO-3 → 400 GB
LTO-4 → 800 GB
LTO-5 → 1.5 TB
LTO-6 → 2.5 TB
LTO-7 → 6 TB
LTO-7 type M → 9 TB
LTO-8 → 12 TB
LTO-9 → 18 TB
LTO-10 → 30 TB
For a modern computer, LTO-4 or better would be sufficient, but nobody makes those drives anymore. The lowest capacity LTO drives manufactured today appear to be LTO-7. (See also Quantum’s datasheet).
One of Retrospect’s patented features was de-duplication across all the machines it was backing up. For example, you could backup a bunch of Windows computers and it would only back up a particular version of a Windows file one time.
…which surprised me when Connected Corporation released their own backup software, which had the same feature.
Connected had their own ownership journey:
Acquired by Iron Mountain in 2004, forming Iron Mountain Digital (aka Iron Mountain Connected)
Iron Mountain sold this division to Autonomy in 2011
HP acquired Autonomy in 2011 in a historically bad business decision
The backup product was renamed as HP Connected Backup, aka HP Connected MX
I don’t use Growly’s backup utility but I’ve been happy with a couple of other Growly applications:
Personally, I think it’s worthwhile to use a widely-adopted, paid backup program offered by an established company in conjunction with Time Machine (or other free backup software). Why? Because if you’re in a situation where you need a lot of help or facing a crisis, customer service and technical support will be a lot better from developers who treat their backup app as a product, not a hobby.
Oh, my, Retrospect, I remember it well. I had several backup devices along the way, including an external SCSI-attached tape drive backup from HP (I think) that broke down repeatedly. Believe it used DAT tapes cartridges. Then for a long while I used one of those Zip drives.
I use whatever my Backup Guru, Joe Kissell, recommends !
At the moment, CCC and Time Machine and for a few specific tasks ChronoSync. Used Super Duper! for some years but not lately. It helped me restore an iMac swivel-screen to usability!
First that comes to mind, @doughogg , is my collection of pdf user manuals and product info. I keep the main folder on a MBP and sync other devices ie MBA or iPads.
But the developer refers to it as “The Ultimate Backup And File Sync App For Your Mac”. It does a lot more than I use it for.
As I transitioned from MBP to MBA as main daily computer I thought about putting a bunch of info I wanted on multiple devices on a USB stick or HD connected to our router and sync them all with ChronoSync but never fully researched that.
I use ChronoSync on certain groups of files. You can create a bunch of tasks and then group the tasks in a container to all run, or just have some of the tasks run. For example, I have separate folders for photos from each of my digital cameras. I created a backup task for each camera folder and eventually grouped them into my big Pentax backup. You can turn off some of the contained tasks if you know that nothing has changed. You can set up your tasks to archive older versions of files rather than delete them immediately or put them in the Trash.
I mentioned earlier in the thread how much I dislike the new CCC interface, and that definitely still stands. Setting up a basic task, which used to be incredibly simply, is just awful.
Worse though, is I can no longer get it to do a backup. It fails with “An exception occurred in CCC’s Clone Kit Service.”. I tried to do an update, it got as far as “Expanding” or whatever term it used, then simply hard crashed. Now when I try to upgrade, it only offers a paid upgrade to version 7. Given how poorly I’ve received Version 6, paying for another upgrade isn’t something I’d consider.
I don’t enjoy saying this, but after 20 odd years of multi-seat use, and being a massive advocate for CCC, it’s time to say farewell. I’m equally disappointed and sad, but there’s plenty of other options available, especially as it’s really a data only backup now.
@doughogg, I use Chronosync on a server machine, with ChronoAgent on about 5 macs in the household. So it can be used for centralized backup. In addition, I have it check if any “dot” files in my home directory have changed and then copy those files to my account on the other machines (so every time I update, e.g. .zshrc or .emacs I don’t have to remember to do it on the other machines too). For my primary development directory on one machine, I have it make more frequent synchronizations to the server: sometimes I directly mount the dev directory when I’m working away from that desk, but sometimes I use the server’s copy particularly when I don’t want to bog down the dev machine with server tasks (e.g., when I’m running a FPGA build under a VM there, it tends to want a lot of resources).
With the newest version of ChronoSync, it’s also possible for the remote (ChronoAgent) clients to request the server to initiate a particular backup or sync, which I’m sure will be helpful in the future!
What is so “awful” about it? I find the “pick a source, pick a destination, start” interface to be pretty straightforward.
Did you try asking their support? I have always found them to be very responsive, and on at least one occasion they sent a custom build that solved some issue I was facing. Top-notch, every time I have interacted with them.
It’s changed from being a simple, single window to now requiring you to dig through new windows. Filtering used to be a tree view in the main window - now a floating window. There’s several fairly obscure ‘menus’ on this window which aren’t referenced in the ‘Tips’. The advanced Settings are now a seperate sheet with multiple menus. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I found the previous, single window design much easier to use - especially when wanting to set significant numbers of filters. I prefer the old interface, it’s just my opinion.
No I didn’t.
In case you missed it, I’ve been a multi license business user for over 20 years, and been extremely happy with it. I’ve interacted with Bombich on several occasions, and even had discussions on here with Mike. The service has always been excellent.
However, since Apple locked down the systems, CCC has become less valuable to us. The last discussion I had with Mike was because CCC wasn’t cloning parts of my disk (we had custom Apache/PHP/MySql). It would simply ignore them. We tried many things and I was never able to get it to work. This was a significant issue for us.
Putting that aside, it’s now essentially a data copying utility rather than a bootable clone tool. For us, it lost the primary reason we used it. There are many other options for scheduled data copying. Given it no longer works here without crashing, I’m not interested in paying an upgrade for a utility I can easily replace. Whilst I’m not Time Machine’s biggest fan, I can simply use TM to backup my data.
We had many years happily paying for CCC. It literally saved us on several occasions when a machine failed and we simply booted from the clone and kept working (we used it to clone servers). That’s not how it is now.
You seem to have taken personal offence at the criticism, that’s fine, you’re obviously free to keep using it, but for us that time has passed.
Sorry if I touched a nerve, I certainly didn’t mean to. I didn’t take any offense at the criticism (I have no horse in this race), I was just curious why you found it “awful”. That’s a strong word, and I just didn’t agree that the interface was that bad. Personally I like having the advanced settings tucked away and not in-your-face, it makes the source/destination/scheduling a little cleaner. IIRC, you can actually choose to have the advanced settings shown in the main window. (yes, found it – click “General” in the toolbar). And of course there’s “simple mode” (although I prefer the scheduling interface).
!