Comments on: SuperDuper, a perfect complement to Time Machine

By: Marty

Marty — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:40:57 +0000

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.

By: Your Mac Backup options are… Part 1: Local and Networked Storage « Smoking Apples

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:26:37 +0000

[...] so that you know exactly what’s going to happen when you hit the button. [SuperDuper was previously reviewed on [...]

By: Alistair

Alistair — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:01:42 +0000

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.

By: Doug Petrosky

Doug Petrosky — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:28:11 +0000

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.

By: Milind Alvares

Milind Alvares — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:05:57 +0000

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

By: Alistair

Alistair — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:01:23 +0000

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.