First Look: SuperDuper! 2.5
updated 04:30 pm EST, Thu February 14, 2008
First Look: SuperDuper!
Sometimes backing up your crucial files is not enough. Ordinary backup programs may copy your files and Time Machine can retrieve files that you may have changed or deleted. Unfortunately, if your Macintosh hard disk completely fails, backups and Time Machine can only recover your data, but they won’t help get your Macintosh back up and running in a hurry. That’s where SuperDuper! comes in to save the day. Instead of just copying individual files, SuperDuper! clones your entire hard disk, preserving your complete Macintosh program settings and files. SuperDuper! can even share an external hard disk with Time Machine. Now Time Machine can protect individual files while SuperDuper! protects your entire hard disk.
SuperDuper! copies entire hard disks
If your hard disk fails, SuperDuper! lets you boot off your external hard disk so you can copy the contents of the external hard disk back on to your Macintosh hard disk. Within minutes, you can restore your Macintosh to its original pre-crash state complete with any custom settings you may have made.
For greater protection, you can schedule SuperDuper! to backup and clone your hard disk at regular intervals, such as at 1:30 AM Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. By scheduling backups automatically, SuperDuper! protects your data at your convenience.
Scheduling can automatically back up your hard disk
To encourage people to try and buy SuperDuper!, the publisher offers a trial version of the program that provides basic hard disk cloning capabilities absolutely free with no time limitations whatsoever. If you pay the modest $27.95 price, you’ll get access to the program’s more advanced features that lets you customize SuperDuper!’s behavior by writing your own scripts.
The biggest limitation of SuperDuper! is that it only works with external hard disks connected through a FireWire cable (on PowerPC Macintosh models) or through a USB or FireWire cable (on Intel Macintosh models). If want to backup your files on CDs or DVDs, you’ll have to use another program. Despite this minor restriction, SuperDuper! is a must-have program for anyone who needs to safeguard their data.
Time Machine can
02/14, 05:28pm reply
It may not work as quickly as SuperDuper, but Time Machine is fully capable of restoring a drive. I know ... I had to do it about 2 weeks ago. Took a couple hours, and you have to have your Leopard install disk handy, but it worked like a charm and saved my bacon.
dotcom
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Joined: Jul 2003
Works on other volumes
02/14, 05:34pm reply
SuperDuper is not limited to external hard drives. It can back up to internal drives and to disk images, which can be local or remote.
Guest
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Joined: Nov 1999
Time Machine is imperfect
02/14, 05:46pm reply
At restoration, Time Machine is far from an ideal choice. First, it is fairly slow. Second, be sure to rebuild permissions, they will be messed up. Finally, some programs/operations will not work right. I have had issues with OpenBase (SOHO Notes) for example. Mail had to be rebuilt. Certainly, if you are short a recent normal backup, Time Machine can save your bacon. But SuperDuper is superb software that always works, and can make clones and images for setting up other Macs or changing boot drives.
davidlfoster
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Joined: Dec 2005
both needed
02/14, 07:18pm reply
Time Machine is great for many common backup issues; it runs frequently and makes it a breeze to recover lost, damaged or changed files. I love it for that. It is the best backup system I have ever seen for recovery from user error.
SuperDuper! is totally different. It is great for backing up complete system snapshots and is thus well suited to rapid recovery from hardware failure.
Ultimately, power users need both. Casual home users are best served by the utter simplicity of Time Machine, and users who rely upon systems for income need SuperDuper!
bradpdx
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Joined: Sep 2007
not good..
02/14, 10:54pm reply
I've used superduper in the past, and I've found it to be unreliable and crash prone. I haven't tested the new 2.5 enough to know if it suffers from the same issues, but I wouldn't trust the earlier versions. Time Machine is better for dealing with "oops" issues, and if you really need to be able to quickly recover from a disk failure, you should be using RAID, not an image snapshot utility.
DarkVader
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Joined: Sep 2001
ppc usb
02/15, 12:50am reply
uh, I use a usb external drive from a PPC mac. am i missing something?
gikku
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Joined: Jul 2006
very good...
02/15, 09:56am reply
I use SuperDuper everyday to back-up and I have not had one crash or problem.
Dan Donovan
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Joined: Feb 2008
almost forgot...
02/15, 10:05am reply
I use DuperDuper with internal and external eSata drives.
Dan Donovan
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Joined: Feb 2008
ppc usb
02/15, 11:10am reply
I think what is trying to be said is that you can only make a bootable USB drive on an intel machine. PPC machines never got the whole USB-boot thing working, I don't believe (never tried it myself).
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001