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