How can I recover old (versions 4.9) Dantz Retrospect backups?
June 21, 2014 11:05 AM   Subscribe

Posting for Mr. 58: About 10 years ago I would regularly back-up a couple of household Macs using Retrospect Express (version 4.9). I have a number of these old backup files sitting on a drive and I don't know how to recover the files. As far as I can tell I need a version of Retrospect Express that matches the version thru which the backups were created. I'll also need a Mac running OS 9 on which Retrospect was then running. These are both significant hurdles. I've been occasionally hunting on ebay for a the software with no luck. Does anyone have any advice on what might work? Any other possible solutions to investigate?
posted by 58 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)
 
The users guide for version 6 here seems to imply that it can read 4.0 and 5.0 version backups. (pages 11 and 12 reference those versions) It's possible 6.1 can as well, and 6.1 is available here and at the retrospect website under archives. Those may just be updaters, but maybe you don't actually have to go all the way back to 4.9...

Good luck :)
posted by one4themoment at 12:16 PM on June 21, 2014


Your local PC recycling shop will almost definitely have an os9 capable mac(which will probably be something like a blue and white G3. USB! useful for moving the files forward off the mac...). It will cost less than $50. As far as i can tell most of the reason these stick around at those places and don't get torn down is exactly this kind of stuff. There also tends to be a decent sized pile of the last macs that can run both classic and OSX.

As for the actual software, thrift stores would be another place i'd look. Especially the big chain ones. I'm regularly surprised at what old software i see there, and recently dumped like 200 disks of old mac software at my local one.

Another thing, have you contacted retrospect? They DEFINITELY have the files somewhere. I've gotten software that was seemingly blackholed online out of more than one dev that way, especially if it was a super old version.
posted by emptythought at 12:39 PM on June 21, 2014


You can run Mac OS 9 in emulation, using SheepShaver. It looks like at least some versions of Retrospect will run in the emulator.
posted by vasi at 1:13 PM on June 21, 2014


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