Yes. Another advantage is that Retrospect data backups can be compressed, requiring less storage media.

Compression and Rationalizing it Aside
 

Compression, Rationalizing, and Secuirty Aside.... Drive space is not the Paltry state we used to be in with when Diskdoubler and Stacker etc were necessary.

Compression has Risks of Corruption,
Secuirty/securing of Data has risks of corruption.


Point Taken also if you want to five out Data that is slighly harder to unscramble (in the case we are talking about buying a copy of Retro and Scanning contents of the Archive prior to restore to build the Catalog).

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I am comfortable with CCC. I would rather have a verift Data Option. I do read the Logs, which is not the same thing.

I took a brief look at SyncX Pro, there was no mention of verification, only conflict resolution between source and Target. I have not yet tried the Demo or Downloaded the full manual.

I also Contacted Bomback of CCC for fun to see if it will be added. I did not see if the heilos priduct offfers verifcation.

Re: Compression and Rationalizing it Aside
 

Actually, Retrospect provides DES encrypted backups which are very secure.

A Persistant Devils Advocate yet Valid Point:)
 

A Persistant Devils Advocate, yet Valid Point:)

I am personally more concerned with corruption from secuirty/compression, long term access to Data with out Retrospects intervnetion etc.

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I will continue to look for anything that does it all "perhpaps: Sync X pro.

Just to be more devilish- re: your concerns about corruption:

Retrospect verification is very robust, so corruption is very highly unlikely.

Also, consider that if secured/compressed data is corrupted, user is alerted immediately to the data problem. On the other hand, for example, a simple Finder copy or native format backup will not reveal its insideous corruption and perhaps go undetected until it is far too late.

There are actually more safeguards for data integrity built into the secure or compressed data formats than native data.

But, to be anti-devilish again for a moment, the larger resulting comprehensive backup files consisting of many smaller files may be more prone to subsequent corruption than storing separate, smaller native files.

How many Anti = Pro:)
 

How many Anti = a Pro:) :)

Seriously, there is no question that Utitlies that offer verrifcation checksum that the back up has completed sucessfully wether that Data is Native OS readable file or Propritary is Preferrable (if CCC offered I would enable it, no question).

I have had experience with Compressed Data and Archival format Data where that data was partially or completely unreadable and thus am learry of it (with a number of different programs over the last 10 years).

And I had Drive Fulls of Corrupt compressed files, and files that were not sucessfully uncompressed/restored into a readable format (both from compression and Security).

In the case of Retrospect the falures were with the Media (CDR and CDRW) was at fault (not that made one feel better). The data had been verifed at the time of backup and was no longer accessable later when needed.
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In Short, I only like to work with Native Data. As always multiple copies of Data is good idea, not to mention multiple locations etc.

Re: How many Anti = Pro:)
 

Yup, anyone smart will have back ups in several locations (ie tape, cdrw, networked raid, external drive, other HDs).

Also having the most reliable options is probably the way to go. I would say you can't really put a price on your data since data recovery is uber expensive. I know the company we use for data recovery, the price starts at a $200.00 attempt fee, then X amount of dollars/MB recovered and it can get into the thousands real quick. Sometimes a HD just fails and you gotta ship them out to a data recovery specialist. It's usually due to some user who didn't back up their data on the network share to get archived, but it happens.

Once somene had some crazy project due and the user had not backed up their data onto the network share for like 3 weeks straight. Their drive failed and we had to ship it out to data recovery specialist. $2200.00 later we got the data back on some dvds.

Prices have gone up owing to the Drive Size Explostion and edit {} inflation etc.
 

Prices have gone up owing to the Drive Size Explostion and inflation etc.:

I called one of the more reliable services recently Drivesavers...

They Indicated that for aything larger then a 6 gig drive (or was it 8)
even with Economy service, take your time etc. (the failure was not even mechanical, no exotic drive head platter fun etc).

The Drive was a 40gig 1/2 Full accidently Inited $4000.00 min. and only the files "might' be found no Folders.

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Luckily I had the users data 99 percent backed up. End user in ? has 2 computers and 10 Drives (back ups and primary storage).

I was going to have the system recovered just to take a pulse of Costs. Last Drive I recovered @ drivesavers was 2+ years ago it was 4gig $1000 even (and that was for a mechanical/format failure).

we use drive savers as well. I must say they do very good work. They have recovered many things I thought were impossible to recover. Like water damage to a HD (due to an AC leak that submerged a desktop PC in about 3 inches of water, so the HD was completely soaked).

Yup there site is full of amazin Saves
 

Yup there site is full of amazin Saves....

I neglected to mention that 2+ year old faluire/recovery was 100 percent sucess.

Never say always, though it is better to back up 1000 times:)

OK Not a 1000:)