8.7.14 - SuperDuper 2.0.1 v76
I don't kow about you, reader, but I've had my share of catastrophic data loss events over the years, and I wouldn't mind in in the least if it never happened again. But it probably will.
With that in mind, I went hunting for backup software for the Mac, and I soon found SuperDuper. This product does exactly what it is supposed to do, and it does so easily, quickly, and in a well behaved manner.
Having said that, I managed to get myself in a mess because I assumed you could attach a USB drive through a hub and get decent performance. First off, let me tell you that you can't. If you're going to be attaching a USB drive, attach it right to one of the Mini's two USB ports. Really. Trust me on this one. I tried to use a USB hub, and due to extremely slow backup speeds and a couple of very large files (8 GB mpegs), it appeared to me that I had found some kind of problem (I hadn't, or at least, not with SuperDuper. USB hub performance, yes, there is definitely a problem there. There was also definitely nothing wrong with SuperDuper.)
So, to make a long and fairly embarrasing story mercifully (and cowardly) short, I brought my "problem" to the support forum for SuperDuper, and they were polite, patient, helpful, knowledgable, and entirely refrained from pointing out that I was being an idiot, which I am grateful for. However I must admit that in fact, I was being an idiot. Sigh. Still, what a great test of technical support, eh? Say... Yeah! That's it! It was a test! I'm so clever... What's that? You say the microphone is still on?
SuperDuper can do an erase of the target drive and then copy everything it is supposed to, and thereafter, it can add (or remove) only those things which have changed. This means that after the first backup, it is literally trivial to keep an updated backup of your entire system on another drive. This creates a warm and fuzzy feeling I highly recommend you experience as soon as possible. My drive was 300 GB, so I partitioned it into 100 and 200, and used the 100 to back up the Mini's 80 GB drive. Which works flawlessly, and I have 200 GB or so to goof around with, keeping in mind that I don't have a backup of that.
SuperDuper can schedule backups daily or at various convenient intervals, and so what I did was create the main backup manually, then schedule an automatic smart backup (just what's changed) every morning at 5 AM, when I am definitely not going to be using the machine.
SuperDuper can do some other useful things as well. It can back up just your user data instead of the whole drive, and if you're into doing a little experimenting, it is script driven so you can edit the scripts, and it can also call other system functions and scripts so any specialized fussing about you need to do should present no problems. It can also put your machine to sleep when it is done if you like, and you have the choice of leaving the SuperDuper interface up so the next time you come to your computer, you can see how the last backup went. SuperDuper can back up to a drive, creating a bootable duplicate of the original drive, or it can back up to a disk image, which can be useful if you want your backup kept on the same partition as other data you have.
Once your data is backed up, SuperDuper's backup format is compatible with the Mac's understanding of what a backup should be, so under the worst possible circumstances, you can slip your OSX install disk in the drive, boot from that, start Disk Utility, and use the restore function there to save the day. Quickly. Easily. Simply. Nice!
Very thoughtful things, these features and capabilities. Software should help you, and that's obviously the character of the thinking behind SuperDuper's feature set, interface, and in fact its entire purpose for existing.
Note that the free to try version has some limitations, specifically it won't do a smart backup for you, so you'll have to erase the entire volume and copy everything, which takes a while. It won't do scheduled backups, either. But look, you'll definitely want to buy the product. Or if you don't, then after you've had your first crash, perhaps you'll remember this review and then you'll want to buy the product. I assume anyone who has ever lost all their data because they hadn't set up a backup mechanism is smart enough to never, ever want that to happen to them again.
SuperDuper is free to try, and $27.95 to buy.
Five out of five stars, plus a "must buy" rating.
Link: SuperDuper
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