Super Duper vs Time Machine

[Hen3ry]

sh1
--
Geoffrey Heard

http://pngtimetraveller.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-does-standard-of-living-mean-in.html

 

[webfrasse]

Super Duper makes a "bootable clone copy" of your Hard Drive so that you can make complete restore of your Hard Drive.

It's possible to do a complete restore from Time Machine, too. Stick the system disk in, connect your Time Machine backup drive, fire up Time Machine, and tell it which backup date to restore from. It will reassemble the entire disk using that snapshot.

Depending on the size on the TM backup (I guess), it can be very time consuming. A friend spent +8 hours recently restoring a crashed laptop...just watching the progress bar for a full day.

While I know that, I still use SuperDuper clones in addition to Time Machine. The primary advantage of SuperDuper is not that it can do a complete restore (since Time Machine can do that too), but purely the time advantage of being able to boot up and start working immediately from your clone, if necessary. Because if you rely only on Time Machine, of course it will take a while for it to reassemble a complete single state of the disk from its system of incremental backups.

1. I'm keeping Time Machine running full-time. Love those hourly backups.

2. Bought two Seagate USB-powered drives and have begun making daily clones using Carbon Copy Cloner. Will swap the drives every week or so to off-site storage.

3. Got a safe deposit box in my local bank for off-site storage of the cloned drives (and other important stuff, of course). Even though the bank is also in quake territory, my drives will be more secure there than in my hillside house.

Sounds good, very similar to what I do. I just use drives on a faster interface (FireWire 800 or eSATA), for faster backups and restores.

--
Mikael

 

[KrishnaM]

I was told that Time machine doesn't recognize the Super Duper's cloned copy as original and there are problems in recovering files from Time Machine. Is it true? Why not just use the smart update feature in Super Duper for regular backs instead of using cloned bootable copy from SD and then recover files from TM? Can I schedule SD back up more frequently then just once a week?

Thanks
Krishna

 

[webfrasse]

Someone told you wrong or you misunderstood.

SD/CCC and TM are complimentary methods to do backup. They don't do the same thing. SD/CCC will maintain a clone, a mirrored copy. TM will backup files a keep versions of files. Default is that it will do this every hour.

I was told that Time machine doesn't recognize the Super Duper's cloned copy as original and there are problems in recovering files from Time Machine. Is it true? Why not just use the smart update feature in Super Duper for regular backs instead of using cloned bootable copy from SD and then recover files from TM? Can I schedule SD back up more frequently then just once a week?

Thanks
Krishna

--
Mikael

 

[Event_shooter]

You can never have too much money or too many backups.

Carbon copy is junk. I've had it over a year and it has never finished backing up y hard driver YET!

I have 4 Hard drives and a few externals. I do auto back ups with Time machine because it backs up almost hourly. Then every night I clone th main hard drive with Super duper.

THEN...... I clone the hard drive not as regularly on external drives.

WHY you may ask? If you've ever gone through a hard drive crash you would too. If fact last week My main drive got corrupted and it was not recognized. I started from the clone and I was back in business in minutes. I ended up reformatting the main hard drive, then cloned the main hard drive from the cloned hard drive and I'm back to my regular schedule.

Lastly I have a 3G hard drive I store off property with 20 years of work on it and refresh that once a week so I'm only out a week at the most on that one.

 

[KrishnaM]

Thanks.

 

[KrishnaM]

SD/CCC and TM are complimentary methods to do backup. They don't do the same thing. SD/CCC will maintain a clone, a mirrored copy. TM will backup files a keep versions of files. Default is that it will do this every hour.

Does it mean SD makes only one cloned copy and just updates it (instead of making 'timed back up versions' like TM)? Then it makes sense to use both SD and TM togather. I was just using TM till now.

Thanks
Krishna

 

[John Martini]

Interesting; I had no problem setting up Carbon Copy Cloner. It only took about 3 hours to completely backup my hard disk (about 160 GB).

--
John A. Martini
http://www.pbase.com/jamartini

 

[webfrasse]

SD/CCC and TM are complimentary methods to do backup. They don't do the same thing. SD/CCC will maintain a clone, a mirrored copy. TM will backup files a keep versions of files. Default is that it will do this every hour.

Does it mean SD makes only one cloned copy and just updates it (instead of making 'timed back up versions' like TM)? Then it makes sense to use both SD and TM togather. I was just using TM till now.

Yes, incremental updates in SD/CCC just means that it will update the clone whit what has been changed on the Master since the last backup. Much faster than a full clone.

Thanks
Krishna

--
Mikael

 

[webfrasse]

You can never have too much money or too many backups.

Carbon copy is junk. I've had it over a year and it has never finished backing up y hard driver YET!

CCC is a GUI on top of rsync which is the gold standard in the unix world. Rock solid. Your drive must definitely have other issues. How often do you run Repair Permissions and Repair Disk in Disk Utility?

I use CCC daily to backup a 2TB in my iMac to 2 different external drives that I rotate every week. No issus.

I have 4 Hard drives and a few externals. I do auto back ups with Time machine because it backs up almost hourly. Then every night I clone th main hard drive with Super duper.

THEN...... I clone the hard drive not as regularly on external drives.

WHY you may ask? If you've ever gone through a hard drive crash you would too. If fact last week My main drive got corrupted and it was not recognized. I started from the clone and I was back in business in minutes. I ended up reformatting the main hard drive, then cloned the main hard drive from the cloned hard drive and I'm back to my regular schedule.

Lastly I have a 3G hard drive I store off property with 20 years of work on it and refresh that once a week so I'm only out a week at the most on that one.

--
Mikael

 

[graybalanced]

Yes, incremental updates in SD/CCC just means that it will update the clone whit what has been changed on the Master since the last backup. Much faster than a full clone.

To clarify, both SD/CCC and Time Machine make incremental updates, the difference is, in SD you have the one single clone that gets updated (you only have the most recent file of everything, even if the most recent file is the one that went bad), while in TM you have a history of document versions. Another reason to use both.

 

[Event_shooter]

You can never have too much money or too many backups.

Carbon copy is junk. I've had it over a year and it has never finished backing up y hard driver YET!

CCC is a GUI on top of rsync which is the gold standard in the unix world. Rock solid. Your drive must definitely have other issues. How often do you run Repair Permissions and Repair Disk in Disk Utility?

I run repair permissions about once a week. The drive is under a year old, I switch them out and throw them away every two years even if they are running fine as I know drives will not last a life time.

It was definitely a software ....

I think I had data saved on an area of the hard drive that develops bad sectors and was irretrievably corrupted and unrecoverable. While generally rare, bad sectors can develop on a hard drive at any time.

After a format and reinstall that drive is working fine. On a Mac this can happen on a hard restarts - I think that was my problem. Some times the only way to stop the spinning gear is to hard shut down. That always hurts.

 

[webfrasse]

You can never have too much money or too many backups.

Carbon copy is junk. I've had it over a year and it has never finished backing up y hard driver YET!

CCC is a GUI on top of rsync which is the gold standard in the unix world. Rock solid. Your drive must definitely have other issues. How often do you run Repair Permissions and Repair Disk in Disk Utility?

I run repair permissions about once a week. The drive is under a year old, I switch them out and throw them away every two years even if they are running fine as I know drives will not last a life time.

It was definitely a software ....

I think I had data saved on an area of the hard drive that develops bad sectors and was irretrievably corrupted and unrecoverable. While generally rare, bad sectors can develop on a hard drive at any time.

After a format and reinstall that drive is working fine. On a Mac this can happen on a hard restarts - I think that was my problem. Some times the only way to stop the spinning gear is to hard shut down. That always hurts.

I would trash that drive. If it has developed bad blocks/sectors once all trust is gone.

--
Mikael

 

[webfrasse]

Yes, incremental updates in SD/CCC just means that it will update the clone whit what has been changed on the Master since the last backup. Much faster than a full clone.

To clarify, both SD/CCC and Time Machine make incremental updates, the difference is, in SD you have the one single clone that gets updated (you only have the most recent file of everything, even if the most recent file is the one that went bad), while in TM you have a history of document versions. Another reason to use both.

I thought it was clear, a clone can't have versions. It wouldn't be a clone then, would it?

--
Mikael

 

[Water Bottle]

event_shooter or anyone?

Event shooter mentioned running repair permissions once a week?

How is this done, running a MacBook Pro.

 

[Tinkerer]

To repair permissions.
Goto > Applications > Utilities > Disk utility App.
Highlight your Hard Drive on the Left, then click on Repair Permissions.

This will take several minutes and it will list which Permissions have been repaired.
You can also use disk Utility to Repair a Disk, but that is another srory.

Tink.

 

[graybalanced]

Yes, incremental updates in SD/CCC just means that it will update the clone whit what has been changed on the Master since the last backup. Much faster than a full clone.

To clarify, both SD/CCC and Time Machine make incremental updates, the difference is, in SD you have the one single clone that gets updated (you only have the most recent file of everything, even if the most recent file is the one that went bad), while in TM you have a history of document versions. Another reason to use both.

I thought it was clear, a clone can't have versions. It wouldn't be a clone then, would it?

It's good that we are talking about this, because it is not clear. Unclear terminology is often used in discussions comparing SD to TM, and it is sometimes easy to see the discussion become confused between people. I am being consistent in how I refer to things. To me, incremental and version are two different things.

"Incremental" means you are only updating the data that changed since last time. Both SuperDuper and Time Machine do this. SuperDuper can do a fast incremental update, resulting in a complete and up-to-date single version, and it is only the most recent version. Time Machine also does a fast incremental update, with different results, in that it adds on new files to the pile of older files it's been collecting. Both are incremental backups, implemented differently.

"Versions" mean multiple instances in time of the same file. Time Machine does this, SuperDuper does not.

This is why I avoid using the word "version" for SuperDuper clones. There is only one version and it's the most recent one created by the last incremental or full update.

 

[Hen3ry]

Cheers, geoff
--
Geoffrey Heard
http://pngtimetraveller.blogspot.com/2011/10/return-to-karai-komana_31.html

 

[webfrasse]

What would you know about it?

Cheers, geoff
--
Geoffrey Heard
http://pngtimetraveller.blogspot.com/2011/10/return-to-karai-komana_31.html

--
Mikael

 

[Hen3ry]

What would you know about it?

Obviously a lot more than you, Mikael, for you clearly know nothing about anything.

here's what I wrote in another thread:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1017&message=40259771

Cheers, geoff
--
Geoffrey Heard
http://pngtimetraveller.blogspot.com/2011/10/return-to-karai-komana_31.html