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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / July 2007SuperDuper! Lives up to its name
Hello, Overnight last night, I ran SuperDuper! 2.1.4 for the first time to make a bootable back-up of OS X 10.4.10 on a partition on my external FW HD connected to my G4 Quicksilver. I booted from the back-up, and have been working in it all morning. I must say that I'm very impressed! Can't tell any difference between working with this system and working with the regular boot system, but it gets better: when I did the same using SilverKeeper 1.1.4, the boot volume icon was generic when booted from the back-up, whereas the boot volume icon I see now is the same as my regular boot volume's icon (a custom icon I made before testing these back-up apps). I forgot to move a few directories to their proper places in this back-up volume, so Eudora can't find my settings, and thinks I want to create a new account, but that's easily remedied...but then again, I don't need to run every app I have under this back-up. The real reason I want to create the back-up is so that I can later run utilities that may require me to be booted from a system other than my regular boot system. The directions for SuperDuper! were very easy to understand, and I found the app simple, effective, and fast. I'm ready now to get rid of SilverKeeper in favor of this handy utility :) Happy computing, Eric ============================================================== Posted with Hogwasher. For a free Test Drive click on: http://www.asar.com/cgi-bin/product.pl?58/hogwasher.html ============================================================== > don't need to run every app I have under this back-up. The real reason > I want to create the back-up is so that I can later run utilities that > may require me to be booted from a system other than my regular boot > system. Another reason can be, if you do something that seriously impacts your primary HD or system, but you know what you did (like deleting the System fonts or, as in my case, accidentally dumping a whole bunch of files onto the desktop and bringing the Finder to its knees), you can boot from even a much earlier SuperDuper! backup; repair the damage on your primary HD; and then go back to it with (SFAIK) no further recovery or restore. >> don't need to run every app I have under this back-up. The real reason >> I want to create the back-up is so that I can later run utilities that [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > your primary HD; and then go back to it with (SFAIK) no further recovery > or restore. Yes, I'm bound to come upon such a situation eventually. When I'm able to get myself a nice, large external FW HD, I'll probably keep a number of back-ups--how often should the average "do it all" home user make these bootable back-ups?--and thus have a few options of how far back in time to go. Probably a great set-up for troubleshooting! Thanks, Eric ================================================================ Hogwasher: You don't have to sacrifice friendliness for power http://www.asar.com/cgi-bin/product.pl?58/hogwasher.html ================================================================ > Yes, I'm bound to come upon such a situation eventually. When I'm able > to get myself a nice, large external FW HD, I'll probably keep a number > of back-ups--how often should the average "do it all" home user make > these bootable back-ups?--and thus have a few options of how far back > in time to go. Probably a great set-up for troubleshooting! SuperDuper! uses a smart copy scheme so that after the initial copy the new incremental copies are fast. However, they do not preserve the older version. If you need an archival utility, look for a professional backup program, or make several complete SuperDuper! copies - with the disk requirements that entails (one complete copy each time).  Signature/Jon For contact info, run the following in Terminal: echo 36199371860304980107073482417748002696458P|dc > SuperDuper! uses a smart copy scheme so that after the initial copy the new > incremental copies are fast. However, they do not preserve the older version. > If you need an archival utility, look for a professional backup program, or > make several complete SuperDuper! copies - with the disk requirements that > entails (one complete copy each time). I'm an avid user of SuperDuper! and expect that when Leopard arrives that the combination of SuperDuper! and TimeMachine will provide an ideal method of backing up. As things now stand I back up my main drive via SuperDuper! to five firewire 800 volumes, one receiving a nightly backup and the remaining four receive a backup based upon which of the four weeks of the month is current. I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because I had an available backup to resort to. SignatureJames Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com > I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because I > had an available backup to resort to. Word. Never again will I go without. : ) SignatureJR > > I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because I > > had an available backup to resort to. > > Word. Never again will I go without. : ) AMEN! It save my a__ more than once. Signaturedowop >> I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because I >> had an available backup to resort to. > > Word. Never again will I go without. : ) Roger, I thought you were a Restrospect devotee? No? Or do you use both? Signature///--- > >> I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because > >> I [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Roger, I thought you were a Restrospect devotee? No? Or do you use both? Dunno about Roger, but I do. I have Retrospect running incremental back-ups (four, rotating) of all the user accounts on the office machines, plus a SuperDuper! bootable clone of the server once a month. SignatureSara The teeth are free at last! Fly free, young teethies! >>>> I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because >>>> I [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > back-ups (four, rotating) of all the user accounts on the office > machines, plus a SuperDuper! bootable clone of the server once a month. Yep - Retrospect is hard to beat for daily incremental network backups. SignatureJR >>> I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because I >>> had an available backup to resort to. >> >> Word. Never again will I go without. : ) > > Roger, I thought you were a Restrospect devotee? No? Or do you use both? Well I said I'd never go without *backups* again. ; ) Yes, my daily multi-platform incremental network backups are performed by Retrospect to Exabyte VXA2 tapes (very cool, cutting-edge packet tape technology, BTW <http://tinyurl.com/27ebt3> if you are curious). Retrospect is still THE choice for doing this type of backup in a multi-platform networked environment to tape, as far as I'm concerned. I did, however, use SuperDuper recently to clone the startup volume in my G5 tower to a refurbished SATA drive. Retrospect's duplication does not preserve a lot of metadata. That doesn't matter a whole lot for the type of data I back up daily over the network; but for a straight clone, metadata is important. So with SuperDuper's excellent metadata-preservation track record, that's what I used for the clone. SD worked like a charm - so I purchased it outright. Great tool. : ) SignatureJR >> SuperDuper! uses a smart copy scheme so that after the initial copy the new >> incremental copies are fast. However, they do not preserve the older version. [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > I hate to think of the number of times my posterior has been saved because I > had an available backup to resort to. Jeez, your a.s is more covered than any I've never seen. Is all this drives/backup processing commercial? Or are you a hobbist of grand mofo proportions? Signature///--- >>> SuperDuper! uses a smart copy scheme so that after the initial copy the new >>> incremental copies are fast. However, they do not preserve the older [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > drives/backup processing commercial? Or are you a hobbist of grand > mofo proportions? Actually I'm a bit of both. But in my almost 50 years of computer experience I've seen far too many instances of catastrophe for lack of backups. SignatureJames Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com >>>> SuperDuper! uses a smart copy scheme so that after the initial copy the new >>>> incremental copies are fast. However, they do not preserve the older [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > Actually I'm a bit of both. But in my almost 50 years of computer experience > I've seen far too many instances of catastrophe for lack of backups. Same here. Computing without automated daily backups is simply no longer an option for me. I refuse to lose data. Call me spoiled. : ) And as often as possible, I set up family members with automated backups for their Macs. SignatureJR > Same here. Computing without automated daily backups is simply no > longer an option for me. I refuse to lose data. Call me spoiled. : ) > And as often as possible, I set up family members with automated > backups for their Macs. Limiting this to family members: You set them up with Super Duper for their backup needs? I'm thinking I have some kin I need to help out. Which, as most of us know, involves a regular commitment to said needs. Signature///--- >> Same here. Computing without automated daily backups is simply no >> longer an option for me. I refuse to lose data. Call me spoiled. : ) [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > their backup needs? I'm thinking I have some kin I need to help out. > Which, as most of us know, involves a regular commitment to said needs. No, I set them up with automated nightly backups with Retrospect. SignatureJR > Yes, I'm bound to come upon such a situation eventually. When I'm able > to get myself a nice, large external FW HD, I'll probably keep a number > of back-ups--how often should the average "do it all" home user make > these bootable back-ups?--and thus have a few options of how far back > in time to go. Probably a great set-up for troubleshooting! I have an external hard drive with five partitions. I do smart backups in order about once very week or two. The exception is when Apple comes out with an upgrade. When I remember, I do a backup before I download and install it. Then I do another after. SignatureRobert B. Peirce, Venetia, PA 724-941-6883 bob AT peirce-family.com [Mac] rbp AT cooksonpeirce.com [Office] > I have an external hard drive with five partitions. I do smart backups > in order about once very week or two. The exception is when Apple comes > out with an upgrade. When I remember, I do a backup before I download > and install it. Then I do another after. Meaning you over-write your external drive with the current state of your inboard drive. Then you update the inboard drive, then you over-write the outboard drive? Signature///--- > > I have an external hard drive with five partitions. I do smart backups > > in order about once very week or two. The exception is when Apple comes [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > your inboard drive. Then you update the inboard drive, then you > over-write the outboard drive? I use different partitions for each. Partition N+1 gets the pre-download backup and partition N+2 gets the post download backup, where partition N is the last one I backed up to. I suppose, if partition N were sufficiently recent, I could forego the pre download backup, but how recent is sufficient? SignatureRobert B. Peirce, Venetia, PA 724-941-6883 bob AT peirce-family.com [Mac] rbp AT cooksonpeirce.com [Office] Just tried Super Duper for the first time. All went well until I was coming around the last turn. It pooped out with an error on a file. This, after running both the from-drive and the cleaned to-drive through Disk Utility and TechTool Pro, both on the drive structure and all that as well as a check of the file integrity. It found no problems. I dropped a note to ShirtPocket and they told me to read the docs. I did, they are good docs by the way, which told me to attempt to duplicate the bad file and if that worked okay to rename it and delete the original. My system locked during the duplication. Rebooting I deleted the file, got one form an olde backup, and restarted Super Duper. All worked like a charm. Pretty durn cool, and damned convenient in operation. Signature///--- All was well during the first run of this app, and I got a bootable back-up. However, since I can't choose which directories to back up, like I could with SilverKeeper, I can't make a second b/u to replace the first, as I don't have any volumes with enough space available till I reformat and repartition my external FW HD. I'd say that SuperDuper!'s one failing is that it's an all-or-nothing back-up app (at least in "demo" mode). And the quest continues... Happy archiving, Eric ============================================================== Posted with Hogwasher. Mac first, Mac only: http://www.asar.com/cgi-bin/product.pl?58/hogwasher.html ============================================================== > All was well during the first run of this app, and I got a bootable > back-up. However, since I can't choose which directories to back up, [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > SuperDuper!'s one failing is that it's an all-or-nothing back-up app > (at least in "demo" mode). Pay the shareware fee. >> All was well during the first run of this app, and I got a bootable >> back-up. However, since I can't choose which directories to back up, [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >> > Pay the shareware fee. Would superduper be better than the backup app that comes with the mac account ? David > >> All was well during the first run of this app, and I got a bootable > >> back-up. However, since I can't choose which directories to back up, [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Would superduper be better than the backup app that comes with the mac > account ? I guess it depends on what you mean by "better". Retrospect is better for me. YMMV > Would superduper be better than the backup app that comes with the mac > account ? Lots of reasons, but I regard one of them as *HUGE*. I've done backups (and recoveries) from many, many systems of many brands over the years. One of the things I look at is the process of recovering from a complete system failure (which I've seen my share of). Such recovery is often a long and involved process. I've done ones that took a solid week of work; ok, that one was a bad case, but half a week wasn't at all unusual. The crux of the problem is that if you are starting with a bare-metal system, perhaps with a new disk drive, you first need to get enough of an OS installed than you can run the rest of the recovery. And it is tricky (to say the least) to recover over top of what you are running. Often there are tricks like installing a temporary copy of the OS in some temporary place such as an extra disk drive or partition. With SuperDuper, recovery from a complete system failure is dead trivial. I've never seen simpler on any computer. After you have done any necessary hardware fixes, you just boot from the SuperDuper clone and run a SuperDuper "backup" from the clone back to the main drive. No way your .mac backup is anything like that. I've not done one, but one presumes that you'd at least first need to install an OS and configure it to be able to use your .mac account. (You do have all the needed data written down somewhere other than on your computer, right?) Plus, I don't recall that .mac had nearly enough storage to do your whole system anyway. It is probably fine for off-site backup of individual user files; that seems like the kind of thing it looks designed for. But it is far from ideal for handling complete system failure, such as a hard drive crash. SignatureRichard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain >>> All was well during the first run of this app, and I got a bootable >>> back-up. However, since I can't choose which directories to back up, [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Would superduper be better than the backup app that comes with the mac > account ? It would produce an exacty duplicate of your hard drive from which you can boot, to my knowledge. If that's what you want in "better", you're in luck. Signature///--- > Would superduper be better than the backup app that comes with the mac > account ? They do very different things. SuperDuper is primarily (though it can do other things - subsets of drives, scripts, etc) primarily meant for making full, bootable clones of drives. It's fabulous for that. Backup.app is very much more geared towards incremental archives of work areas/folders. I use both. Backup.app to back up my documents directory daily - which lets me not only recover my docs from yesterday, but also from several days ago - ie. if I change a doc and then decide I wanted an earlier version, I can recover it. SuperDuper to fully clone my hard drive regularly - on my desktop machine, daily and on my laptop about once a week. I should use SD! daily on both, but I don't always hook the laptop up to the external drives. If my hard drive crashes completely (as has happened on my laptop once already - it was as dead as a brick!) I can plug the external clone in, boot up and be up and running in minutes if necessary - and when the dead drive is replaced, just use SD! to clone in the other direction to get back to where I was. Both parts of my back up strategy are equally important. SignaturePlain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow? http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting > SuperDuper is primarily (though it can do other things - subsets of > drives, scripts, etc) primarily meant for making full, bootable clones of > drives. It's fabulous for that. I'm currently using SuperDuper! to each night create two bootable clones of my main drive but expect that when Leopard makes the scene that my backup strategy will include both SuperDuper! and TimeMachine. My two 500 GB drives will be used for TimeMachine and TimeMachine backup and my 250GB drive will be used to backup my internal drive. Yes, I consider myself a backup freak, but as I often said, those backups have on more than one occasion saved me big time! SignatureJames Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com Following the "belt and suspenders" rule, I do end-of-day bootable backups sequentially to two separate external drives using SuperDuper! and SilverKeeper -- typically takes 5 to 10 minutes each. Any thoughts on whether I could start both of those apps *at once* (and head off to bed immediately, instead of waiting for one of them to finish before starting the other)? Haven't tried it; somehow seems risky. If they run simultaneously, will they interfere with each other in the OS, or on the daisy-chained hookup? Or will the second one wait for the first to finish before starting? Any advice before I try it? > Following the "belt and suspenders" rule, I do end-of-day bootable > backups sequentially to two separate external drives using SuperDuper! [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Any advice before I try it? Have you considered AppleScript to launch one after the other? SignatureJR > Any thoughts on whether I could start both of those apps *at once* (and head > off to bed immediately, instead of waiting for one of them to finish before > starting the other)? I can't speak regarding SilverKeeper but SuperDuper! allows one to create scheduled backups that will run automatically without someone being at the computer. The scheduled backups will launch SuperDuper!, mount the target volumes if necessary, unmount the target volumes if mounted by SuperDuper!, and then shut down SuperDuper!. SignatureJames Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com > Any advice before I try it? I think a rotating set of backups - each hard drive on alternate days - is probably a more robust plan regardless of what backup software you use. SignaturePosted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com > > Any advice before I try it? > > I think a rotating set of backups - each hard drive on alternate days - > is probably a more robust plan regardless of what backup software you > use. Why aren't you guys more of an inspiration to me? I will regret it. I employ the "o yeah... been a few days or weeks, better do a complete backup rather than the haphazard drag copying of important changed files to misc volumes, sticks, zips etc... that I have lazily done.) Signaturedorayme > Why aren't you guys more of an inspiration to me? I will regret it. I employ > the "o yeah... been a few days or weeks, better do a complete backup rather > than the haphazard drag copying of important changed files to misc volumes, > sticks, zips etc... that I have lazily done.) Dorayme, You've got me completely boggled here. There have been numerous posts on how to undertake SuperDuper! scheduled backups, backups which can preserve the state of things on a given date, etc. I'm blanking on just what your problem is. SignatureJames Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com > > Why aren't you guys more of an inspiration to me? I will regret it. I > > employ [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > state of things on a given date, etc. I'm blanking on just what your problem > is. TaliesinSoft, I am boggling at your naivety. You have no idea how some beings order their priorities, how they muddle and fuddle and puddle their way thru life. You do realise I hope that I was praising you all and sort of saying that I should be more attentive to these things. I do use SuperDuper now and I have just installed an extra 250GB HD inside my machine for easier backups and I have zips by the dozen, usb sticks sticking out of every pocket and external firewire volumes. I have a stack of work at the moment and I am just not as energetic and perfect or as sharp an operator as I would like to be. I have pretty well got backups of everything. It is just that i engage in risky behaviour for a few hours or even days now and then. I need to get into this scheduling you lot talk about. I have too many questions to ask about it at the moment. You know what happens when i ask the least thing. Or maybe you don't. Better fly, I can hear Michelle coming for my throat again, soon to be followed by the whole of TBG. <g> Signaturedorayme In article <0001HW.C2A7F72F000BC9C3F0407530@news.sf.sbcglobal.net>, > I ran SuperDuper! 2.1.4 for the first time to > make a bootable back-up of OS X 10.4.10 on a partition on my external > FW HD connected to my G4 Quicksilver. I booted from the back-up, and > have been working in it all morning. I must say that I'm very > impressed! Can't tell any difference between working with this system > and working with the regular boot system, but it gets better: ... on the copy has appeared the secret password to get into Fort Knox and... Signaturedorayme |
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