[X4U] SuperDupper question

[Ed Gould]

On Mar 24, 2009, at 7:57 PM, Randy B. Singer wrote:

>
> On Mar 24, 2009, at 5:07 PM, Ed Gould wrote:
>
>> -------SNIP-------------------------------
>
> The thing is, nothing is as simple to use as SuperDuper!, nor as  
> effective.  CCC comes in a close second.  Other backup programs can  
> be a good deal more difficult to figure out how to use, and they  
> may not do as good a job.  See:
>
> http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/

I guess we agree to disagree on this one Randy. Although the support  
was there (for this issue) I find the pay before you try is pushing  
the edge (for me). If super duper had a 10 day try period I would be  
perfectly happy with that (or some other reasonable period). I am not  
cheap but if I buy a car I expect to drive around (even if its 20  
minutes). I know you can't compare a car to a software package but  
the comparison is still there. If I buy a software package in a store  
and it say refuses to install I can *USUALLY* get my $ back from the  
store, with superdupper its take it or leave it. The other option is  
say pay $5 and you get a trial code that lets it run for say 10 days  
at which time you have the option, that might be OK  as $5 is an  
acceptable risk (to me) but $27 even if you do not like it or it  
doesn't do what you would like you are out $27 and tough banana's.  
Maybe I have been spoiled through out the years with software. I know  
when I was working and we ordered software that it damn well work and  
if didn't you got your money back pronto (of course at least trying  
to resolve the issue through the vendor). The product may work vary  
well if you pay the $$ but unless you are willing to take the risk  
(and I am not) why bother.

>
> Actually, there *is* a more simple backup program, and it's built  
> right in to OS X.
>
> The Restore tab in Apple's Disk Utility works almost exactly like  
> Carbon Copy Cloner.  It makes an exact
> bootable clone of your disk.  The only options are to erase, or to  
> leave
> alone the data on the destination disk, and to do a checksum integrity
> test of the data being copied.
That is similar to superdupper. Which is fine but if you do not have  
a disk that is already partitioned you are out of luck. One of the  
features of superdupper is to erase the disk before you start the  
operation. I had to read it very carefully as that is NOT what I  
would have expected.
>
> Unfortunately, this feature does not offer syncronization of files,  
> to do an incremental update
> of your clone.  So the next time that you want to backup you will  
> once again have to be a full backup.
At one time I worked with a package that did roll ins  of the data  
and you had to be very careful if you did it incorrectly. I have  
tried to simplify my backup procedure and essentially take full back  
ups once a week. None of my data is all that critical (ie $$) just  
man hours.
>
> The way you use Disk Utility to create a clone of your drive is to  
> boot
> from the OS X installer CD/DVD, launch Disk Utility, select the  
> volume you wish to copy, click on
> the restore tab, drag the source from the left-hand panel into the  
> source
> block, drag the target volume into the destination block, and click on
> the restore button. Disk Utility will copy the source onto the
> destination.
>
> Unfortunately, this takes 2-3 times longer than using CCC
> or SuperDuper!.
>

I hear you with my old backup system I was offline or 6-8 hours a  
saturday and I was not happy with the way I did things. If I had to  
have that kind of outage at my old job I would have been fired (and  
rightly so) There are at least 2 vendors out that that can take a  
volume and duplicated in the same room or across the world in a few  
minutes (mind you you had to have the bandwidth to do it but it was  
possible) I know one company that synchronized well over 160 volumes  
every day of the week and this was half way across the US. I left  
there but the plans were in place to duplicate well over 1000 volumes  
between here and India (now that was bandwidth). I know the swap over  
occurred as the people in the US were all laid off (outsourced to  
India).
But that was one large environment mine is small and I cannot afford  
to have that kind of backup scenario, so I have to live with what  
tools I have and can afford.

Ed