Comments on: Unsponsored Review: SuperDuper

By: steve garfield

steve garfield — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:16:38 +0000

But what if you jut backup to a drive that is not partitioned? Isn’t the the whole drive a partition?

Can you talk more about Image Files? What are they? I use the default settings. What kind of backup is SuperDuper! making in that case?

I also would like to hear about version control, because I was wondering if I could buy a new drive and have a second backup in case the first fails…

It’s easier for me to ask here, but if you want me to take these questions over to the SuperDuper! forum I can… Maybe SuperDuper! folks will chime in here.

That would be cool.

By: Christopher S. Penn

Christopher S. Penn — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:57:50 +0000

Steve – I back up to an image file instead of a partition. SuperDuper recommends making a separate partition on your backup drive equal to the space on your computer’s drive – that Firewire partition is bootable.

In my case, that doesn’t work so well for me, because I try to version-control my images for off-site archiving – you can back up using SuperDuper to a Sparse Image file (which is Disk Utility’s native format) and then mount that as a virtual disk, but image files are not bootable.

The reason I use the strategy I use is that you can copy image files like any regular file, and so I can copy it to the network, whereas you’d have to go the extra step of imaging your bootable partition if you did the recommended route, and for what I do and how I manage my backups, that’s fairly time intensive.

By: steve garfield

steve garfield — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:54:57 +0000

Great story. I just backed up with SuperDuper! too. It restored my failed MacBook Pro to a replacement MacBook Pro with Migration Assistant when the new replacement system was Leopard. All I had to do was add in a few serial #’s.

Can you explain the part where you say you can’t boot? I backup to an external Firewire dirve. Shouldn’t it be bootable?

By: John Wall

John Wall — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:59:47 +0000

As a PC user I must say: this is some kind of crazy science fiction story.

By: Chris (Amateur Traveler podcast)

Chris (Amateur Traveler podcast) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:41:07 +0000

I was really stressing when I upgraded to Leopard and SuperDuper was not yet available. Now that it has been upgraded and I have a full backup (just last night) I sleep easier.

By: Richard Mondello

Richard Mondello — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:14:23 +0000

SuperDuper! is pretty awesome. I wish I could have used it the last time I sent my MacBook Pro in for repair, but, my spare machine couldn’t run Leopard, so I was out of luck.

I did use it in lieu of the migration assistance once though, and it worked flawlessly.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:09:23 +0000

Sweet! I love it when a product works. It’s great to hear that it worked well for you since I use SuperDuper too.