[X4U] SuperDupper question

[Neil Laubenthal]

Quoting "Randy B. Singer" <randy at macattorney.com>:


>
> Each has its purpose and adherents.  Lots of folks use both.  (Many of
> the attorneys in my MacAttorney user group, for instance, use both.)

True . . .both cloning programs and backup programs are important as  
part of a comprehensive backup strategy. Let's call them what they are  
though. As I said in my other post . . .any professional computer guy  
will pretty much tell you that while clones are a good thing they  
aren't backups . . .following the logic a clone maker isn't a backup  
maker.

The real issue is that most computer users are just that . . .users .  
. and not techies. They don't really understand all the gory details  
and for years many of them did pretty much nothing for backup,  
resulting in lost data when the inevitable drive failure happened. SD  
came around and these users then at least did  something . . .despite  
the drawbacks of SD. What it does . . . it does well, but let me  
illustrate why it's not a backup program. I know you are fully  
familiar with this part . . .so it's not really for your benefit but  
rather the non-techie reader).

Say you have a Filemaker Pro file that tracks all your house  
improvements. Your wife is looking up  a record to help fill out a  
mortgage application since she needs to know what the purchase and  
sales price of your house 3 homes ago was. While looking this up . . .  
she accidentally deletes the record in question and has no idea that  
she did this. She closes the file out when she's done (the file lives  
on your old G4 running Tiger as a home file server). Saturday evening  
comes around . . .and SD kicks on and clones the file server drive to  
the attached firewire drive . . . resulting in last week's copy of the  
file (which contained the accidentally deleted record) getting  
overwritten by this week's copy (which doesn't). Now next week you  
open the file to lookup some other information in the same record . .  
.say the loan number on that house. You're screwed . . .the  
information is gone and you were screwed by your _backup_ program.  
Hence . . . backups have versions and only backup up files you can't  
restore otherwise . . . your Open Directory database for your network  
login at home, your file server data files, etc. You don't backup your  
kernel extensions.

Having a clone of your file server drive that can be used to rapidly  
restore your file server to service on Tuesday night when it fails is  
a good thing too . . .so that you can properly rebuild the file server  
on the weekend . . .but that clone isn't a backup; it's a clone.
> For a thorough discussion of backing up using OS X, and many of the
> programs for doing so compared, check out:
> Take Control of Mac OS X Backups

An excellent tome . . .which makes many of the same points I've made  
in this thread.

> Why do you assume that "most folks" prefer an archival type of backup?
> SuperDuper! is wildly popular among Mac users.  I wouldn't be surprised
> to find that more users use SuperDuper! than Time Machine, even though
> Time Machine comes with OS X.  It would be interesting to take a poll.


Yes . . .SD is popular but a large part of that is due to the fact  
that it predates Time Machine. It was the first really easy to use  
utility . . .and is a vast improvement over nothing (which is what  
still happens in too many cases) . . .but just because it's popular  
and just because it does what it does very well . . .doesn't change  
what it is and what it isn't.

Even the author of SD agreed with me . . .that it's not a versioning  
backup program but a whole disk duplicator. His business model is  
premised on doing one task and doing it well . . .and I can't fault  
that; but he freely acknowledged what I see as shortcomings when we  
corresponded about it. He sees them not a shortcomings but as taking  
away from his laser like focus on doing a single thing well.

SD is a fine program . . .and I'm a registered owner of it. It has  
it's place in a backup strategy . . .but it isn't a backup program. It  
is vastly better than nothing though . . .so I can see the advantages  
of glossing over the details and making things appear easy so that  
users will do what they need to do.