is Mezzo worth spending the extra money over Retrospect ???

[dw]

I will be buying a back up system next week and am still undecided wether i should get Retrospect or pay A LOT more money for Mezzo.. Is Mezzo worth spending the extra $ ???? ( we're talking A LOT more here )...Thanks

[Jim Morris]

I have both. If I had it to do over, I'd just stick with Retrospect. It's alot more reliable and quite a bit cheaper. BUT -- if you HAVE to do "background" backups, Mezzo is your only choice. We thought we needed that feature, but after too many lost files and corrupted sessions, we mainly stick with Retrospect. Both are about the same speed, Mezzo is a bit more "automated", but data integrity was my primary problem.

Jim Morris

[SFXCraig]

We use Mezzo, and have for the longest time (at least 7 years). Never a problem - only problems we ran into came down to the tape drive itself, not the software. Can't speak for Jim's experience though, system setups and different software / extensions may play a role. I've heard people rave both ways.. but background backups is all we ever do.

-Craig

[Rader Ranch]

i've used both quite a bit...and had no major problems with either.
Retrospect DOES back up in the background, incidently, it just slows down more than Mezzo...and Retro. is the only one that can automate and schudule BU, in case you want to have the system back itself up every night...plus Retro. can do mult. systems over a network...
Yet, i still prefer Mezzo, just 'cause i like being able to drag and drop a PT icon to Mezzo and have it know which audio and fade files need to be backed-up, regardless of where they are...

[Mike Thornton]

Mezzo scores over Retrospect because it can read the Protools sessions and back all the files used where ever they are on your drives.

------------------
Mike Thornton
One Stop Digital (OSD) Ltd.
http://www.osd-uk.com

[Kasper]

I cast my vote for Retro. I found Mezzo to be very shaky.

If you always work with sessions that span multiple drives then Mezzo is easier, but if you keep things on the same drive or are pretty organized then Retro works better, in my experience.

I don't trust Mezzo to work in the background, I've had too many crashes. Retro works fine in the background, not a single problem. I think you will find that background operation on either one is not really that great an idea. It just slows down too much. I just b/u at night. Retro will do the b/u and shut off the computer for you.

I also found the Mezzo interface to be quite confusing at first. Once you get to know it, it's ok, but Retro is just more intuitive right off the bat.

So.....if you really want to b/u from multiple drives without screwing around with the organization of the b/u, then go with Mezzo. If you want absolute reliability go with Retro.

kasper

[Lee Blaske]

I've had Mezzo on my shelf for a long time (most likely not the current version). I gave it a brief try, but found it to be somewhat unstable. Call me old fashioned, but I also don't like the idea of things going on in the background on my daw. I prefer to eliminate all potential sources of trouble.

If you search the daw-mac archives, you'll find a lot of folks who are violently angry with GMS over Mezzo's poor performance.

These days, especially if you have a modern, fast, back-up storage device, I think you're much better off with Retrospect. In the past, old tape drives had to grind away forever to get the job done, making the background operation much more necessary. By contrast, a new fast and wide AIT drive really screams. Then again, maybe you're going to skip tape altogether and go with DVD RAM.

Keep in mind that Retrospect is also going to be much more up-to-date with newly released storage peripherals, drivers, operating systems, etc.

Besides, if you're buying a new high-end peripheral, your supplier is probably going to throw Retrospect in for free, anyway.

Lee Blaske

[editor]

Retrospect, the choice of professionals....enough said.

[rat1016]

Retrospect Desktop Backup.V4.2 is awesome.
Worth the 130 bucks from www.buy.com