SuperDuper, a perfect complement to Time Machine

by Milind Alvares
Monday October 13, 2008

SuperDuper, a perfect complement to Time Machine

by Milind Alvares on October 13, 2008

With Leopard, Apple released Time Machine. It is the ultimate backup system for newbies and professionals alike. They say its a true one-click backup solution. I agree. The simplicity and beauty of the Time Machine backup is simply mindblowing. Retrieving files, emails, addresses, and the ability to completely restore a system back to a date and time rightfully makes Time Machine the star feature of Leopard.

But, and there’s always a but, Time Machine has some drawbacks. For one, you cannot boot from a Time Machine drive. In cases of system failure, a faulty OS update, or you just plain want to boot from your earlier system state, you cannot do that with Time Machine. You also have very little control, security, and mobility with Time Machine.

SuperDuper has been a favourite among many mac aficionados. I had never understood what the fuss was about and hence was real excited about Time Machine, and have used that since October 26th, 2007. Then came along the 10.5.4 update which for some reason didn’t agree with my iMac. Kernel panics abound. The only option was to reinstall the OS along with the Time Machine backup. I decided to do a clean install instead. But if I had known about SuperDuper, I would have restored my system in a heartbeat. So let’s look at what this backup tool can do for you.

At it’s core, SuperDuper makes carbon copies of your system anywhere you want it to. This is a bootable copy, which can be used as your startup disk. This copy can be used to bring back your system to the time of the backup. This backup can be mounted on your desktop so you can browse your system using the Finder to retrieve files and folders. And all this can be scheduled.

A Carbon Copy
SuperDuper sports a very simple and intuitive interface. The instructions are also shown right in the workflow so you don’t have to scurry around looking for help files. In this example, I want to backup my Macintosh HD, along with all the system and user files (excluding the temporary and cache files). I also want my backup to be as a disk image. This will prevent any clutter on my external drive as well as keep it manageable.

To do this, I select Macintosh HD in the Copy field, and “Disk Image” in the To field. If I didn’t want a disk image, I can keep my SuperDuper backups right beside the Time Machine backup using the Smart Update option.

With every change in the preferences, the instructions, in plain simple english, change to reflect what is going to happen. This gives you confidence in knowing what you are doing with your data.

SuperDuper backup in progress

After the backup is done, I can just double click the disk image and it will mount on my Desktop. If I had directly backed up to my external drive, I would be able to boot from that drive itself and the files would be available to me right on my external drive without the need for mounting a disk image.

What makes SuperDuper tick
For most part, if you just want SuperDuper as a companion to Time Machine, the free version works just fine. But if you are serious about backups, then you need to pay for SuperDuper. A reasonable $28 gets you Smart Updates, Scheduling, Sandboxing and Scripts.

Scheduling with SuperDuper
(SuperDuper Scheduling options)

Smart Update means incremental backups. This means that you do not have to backup your entire drive every time. SuperDuper will automatically keep a track of the files that have changed and backup only those files. This saves a lot of time and if paired with Scheduling, it can very well replace Time Machine.

I haven’t gone through the intricacies of Sandboxing, but from what I can figure, you can effectively make a test system on your external hard drive (using up just around 15GB). The test system uses your current system user files and applications. With this, you can effectively install something as big as an OS update to see how it reacts with your test system. If everything goes fine, you can install the update on your main system.

But I have Time Machine…
SuperDuper will not make me stop using Time Machine, as the file by file retrieval system as well as archiving different versions of each file and folder is something that I value a lot (okay! Its mainly because I dig the smoking hot interface) But after having tested it, I certainly think that I will use it right alongside my Time Machine backup.

The free version, a mere 2.7MB can be downloaded at the Shirt-Pocket website. The paid features can then be activated from the application itself.

Tagged as: backup, Reviews, Software, superduper, time machine, timemachine

Reader Comments

Your Mac Backup options are… Part 1: Local and Networked Storage « Smoking Apples: October 28, 2009 at 6:56 pm

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John October 28, 2008 at 12:55 am

Hey guys, hoping to have the machine back this week (it’s a work MacBook Pro that’s gone in for a replacement keyboard and will be set up fresh on return). As soon as I have it I will run both backups and post back.

Cheers, John

Alistair November 10, 2008 at 5:26 pm alimack.co.uk

Does anyone have any data now?
Then we can argue about that and whether it was gathered correctly

Milind Alvares November 10, 2008 at 5:32 pm goobimama.blogspot.com

That’s the problem with multiple Johns commenting on a single post. You don’t know which one to catch for the statistics that were promised!

Matteo Corti April 7, 2009 at 12:45 pm

It is not true that a Time Machine disk is not bootable. You only have to install a copy of the system on it will boot without any problem.

I tested it and worked perfectly: booted from the TM disk, formatted my disk and restored.

Matteo

Milind Alvares April 7, 2009 at 4:20 pm goobimama.blogspot.com: The Time Machine disk (backups.db) cannot be used for booting purposes. What other things you do with that disk is irrelevant. In my case I used Super Duper to boot from the same disk that had the Time Machine Backups.db folder.

Doug Petrosky April 12, 2009 at 5:23 am

The point about booting off a system on the timemachine disk is a good one. The only advantage that a super duper backup has over a time machine backup is the amount of time it takes to get back to work. If you have an up to date version of OS X on your time machine disk you can boot off that drive and migrate to it in someware between a few minutes and an hour depending on interface, speed of system and amount of data.

So lets say you Super Duper every night at 2:00 in the morning and you wakup to find your computer dead (lucky for you, after your backup and not during). You can be up and running in only a few minutes. But lets say your drive crashed at 6:00pm after a full day of work. Now your choice would be use Super Duper to get back up in a few minutes and Lose 8+ hours of work, or use Time Machine, and spend an hour to get back the day that you lost!

Using this math super duper would only be as effective in “getting you right back to work” if your drive failed in the first hour of your work day. So how does that make sense? How much time, effort and money do you want to spend on that solution?

It may compliment Time Machine but it is like a piece of parsley next to a steak! IMHO

Alistair April 22, 2009 at 7:48 pm alimack.co.uk

@Doug, we seem to have reached deadlock.
What would you need to do right now if your hard drive failed, and realistically how long would it take? Remember that no backup plan is complete without a test!
Do you have an up to date version of OS X on your Time Machine partition?

machead October 5, 2009 at 3:28 pm

Another product worthy of mention:

Paragon Snapshot [sector-level backup]

Designed to be the safest backup and recovery software for Mac, Snapshot for Mac complements the capabilities of Time Machine with innovative technology typically required of advanced Business backup solutions.

Snapshot for Mac is a set of utilities to help you protect your data by creating point-in-time copies of data. Snapshot-based technology for Windows system has been in place for years and is proven to be one of the best backup solutions; now the benefits of this technology are available for Mac users.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/snapshot-mac/

Alistair October 12, 2009 at 3:02 pm alimack.co.uk

Well the worst happened, my iMac started kernel panicking every 5 minutes and it had to go back to the shop. Turned out to be a Hard Drive failure, luckily I have Applecare on this computer so although it took a fortnight I didn’t have to pay any extra.

For the record, I used my (SuperDuper created) bootable backup to run through my Macbook, worked like a charm. The when the iMac came back I copied the data back. My point is that I didn’t turn to the TM backup once, it would have taken too long to re-create the data and my Macbook doesn’t have enough space.

From this experience:
1) Bootable backups are essential for catastrophic failure;
2) SuperDuper works as advertised and kept me going through the fortnight of iMac-less existence;
3) Time Machine wouldn’t have worked in my situation not without extra expense and a lot of time.

I (now) have a Time Capsule, but still believe TM is good for smaller failures (file corruption, accidental deletion etc.).

Can’t comment on Snapshot.

Doug Petrosky October 12, 2009 at 11:42 pm

I have to disagree again with a caveat this time though. Much of this discussion centered around getting back up and running on your failed computer but you bring up an interesting point which is getting up and running on a totally different computer. As long as both are bootable on the same OS, SD is a good way to be up and running but it is far from the only way.

You obviously own an external drive large enough to restore your iMac’s data (you are using it for SD). If you spent 1/100th of the time you do with SD backups you could have kept that drive up to date with the current OS releases. On the failure you could have booted your macbook from that drive, TS restored and been in the same place you were with SD. Then when your iMac came back your new TS backup could be restored back to the iMac instead of restoring with SD.

The advantage SD gives you is it is a little faster for that initial restore but the downside is it is almost definitely a more out of date backup (unless you are doing hourly SD backups).

So, assuming daily SD backups, is the 1-24 hours of work lost sense your SD backup worth the 30min to 1 hour you loose in time doing your restore?

Makes you think.

Alistair October 13, 2009 at 12:31 am alimack.co.uk

Well I think I owe you a drink Doug for sticking with the argument so doggedly!

To respond to your points - the external drive is big enough, but I would have had to repartition it on the fly if it was just a TM backup. It’s also difficult to keep booting off an external drive and keep your TM backup up to date on the same drive.

SD backups aren’t particularly time consuming once the initial backup is done, it takes about 10 - 20 mins for the daily update. You can apply TM updates to update your bootable clone, too.

I can see I’m not going to change your mind, but I’m pretty happy with my setup and I think now it’s been battle tested, I’m sticking with it. But good luck to you and I hope you never need to test your setup in anger.

Milind Alvares October 13, 2009 at 12:35 am soggysh.it

Well I think I owe you a drink Doug for sticking with the argument so doggedly!

I think all of us do! Doug has really proven himself, and it’s almost a year since we published this one. Thanks Doug! (And thanks Alistair as well, for remembering to post the real world ‘test’)

Now to fomulate some points to counter Doug’s arguments once and for all

Doug Petrosky October 13, 2009 at 7:58 am

Well I was about to say that if you didn’t use SD the drive you are doing SD to would be the drive you would restore to and would keep the updated bootable OS on.

But Wait a second!!!!! Stop the Presses!!!!!!! Why did it take this long for someone to answer the question I posted, I don’t even remember when.

Alistar said
“You can apply TM updates to update your bootable clone, too.”

The issue I keep bringing up is that a TM backup is more up to date than a SD backup so normally it would be better for me to restore from TM so I’m back to where I was instead of loosing a days worth of work to get back up to where my last SD backup was. From everything I could tell about SD it appeared that you couldn’t use TM to update your SD Restore without doing a full TM restore (which saves you nothing). So how does this work? Can you just select your Home Folder and click restore? and everything is back in sync?

I truly appreciate the intellectual banter, but actual new knowledge is oh so much better still.

Alistair October 13, 2009 at 3:31 pm alimack.co.uk

Dave (from Shirt Pocket) mentioned it earlier in the thread, haven’t tried it but I think that you just fire up the TM interface as usual and replace file(s) - also I assume you can fire up from System Disks and chose the restore point.

Marty December 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm

I recently upgraded my hard drive (2.5 sata 640gb) and used time machine to restore my data. It was simple do do but it took forever and some data was missing so i decided to restore again from my latest backup and it wouldnt work for me even though i backed up to time machine immediately before i tried this. I was not happy so i tried super duper to clone my new HD from my old one. This worked perfectly so i ended up buying a second 2.5 Sata 640gb hard drive with a enclosure and just use super duper to keep an updated clone. Now if my hd fails i just pop in the clone and thats it. I can also use the copy to boot on any mac computer through usb. In my opinion this is the best way to keep your system backed up.

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