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Status of SuperDuper! and Big Sur
- Thread starter honestone33
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By "IR" do you mean Internet Recovery? I can't see that it says that....only seems to mention normal Recovery. If the machine can't boot to normal Recovery for some reason it will try to boot from Internet Recovery, and you could initiate the TM restore from that.
Ok. Sorry for my ignorance I've never used TM.
So for argument sake if initially I had 11.1 on my external SSD drive and backed that up to a TM drive , then installed 11.2 and did the same, TM would have a couple of system snapshots on there ?
So for argument sake if initially I had 11.1 on my external SSD drive and backed that up to a TM drive , then installed 11.2 and did the same, TM would have a couple of system snapshots on there ?
In Big Sur, TM creates hourly snapshots, but only of the Data volume not the System volume. So you couldn't restore a TM snapshot from before you upgraded from 11.1 to 11.2, in order to get back to 11.1. The snapshot restore would restore your chosen TM snapshot of the TM Data volume to the currently installed OS, 11.2 in your example.
The only way to roll back the OS is to erase, install the old OS, and then migrate a Data volume backup from CCC or TM.
OK thanks Mike.
I run my iMac from an external 500GB SSD and I currently have a clone drive again of 500GB SSD, so a couple of points IF I was going to use that drive as a TM drive:
1. It wouldn't run out of space due to having many OS snapshots on it as you stated
2. If something went wrong with an update of an OS on my main SSD, I could do a restore of a previous OS and all my data ( effectively the whole drive ) from the TM back up ?
3. If #2 is true, what would be the point of having CCC or SD cloning the whole drive ?
My current set up is now using CCC to do a full clone of the SSD to another SSD which takes just over 10 minutes to do.
I run my iMac from an external 500GB SSD and I currently have a clone drive again of 500GB SSD, so a couple of points IF I was going to use that drive as a TM drive:
1. It wouldn't run out of space due to having many OS snapshots on it as you stated
2. If something went wrong with an update of an OS on my main SSD, I could do a restore of a previous OS and all my data ( effectively the whole drive ) from the TM back up ?
3. If #2 is true, what would be the point of having CCC or SD cloning the whole drive ?
My current set up is now using CCC to do a full clone of the SSD to another SSD which takes just over 10 minutes to do.
If you forced me to choose between CCC and TM, I would probably choose CCC because my personal experience of full restores using CCC as a migration source has been better than from TM, and because it offers the possibility of being a bootable backup, although not very important for me. Also if you only have a 500GB drive to use for backup that is usually considered a bit small for a Time Machine back up a 500GB source drive.
1. The Time Machine Snapshots which are used for the near instant restores, and which can cause space problems are not on your backup drive but on your boot drive. They are supposed to get cleared automatically but IME this doesn't always happen so manually deleting these snapshots is sometimes useful. The regular backups which do go on to your TM backup drive also use APFS snapshots but these are different.
2. As I said earlier the only way to roll back to a previous OS version after a bad install, is to erase, install the previous version and migrate your Data volume in from either a TM or CCC backup. You will need to find and download a full installer for the previous version. There is no direct way of using TM to roll back as there used to be.
3. One reason for having CCC (or SD) in addition to TM is that the CCC (or SD according to latest blog) backup can be made bootable, which the TM drive can't. See here with limitations here. The other reason is simply having an alternative strategy available.
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Thanks for that Mike. Much clearer.
As I tend not to be doing work on documents etc on the iMac, mostly used as a media hub with another drive holding my 5TB of media data, I'm thinking TM may not hold much advantage for me.
As already stated, because the full clone of the external boot SDD only takes 10 mins, I will probably stick solely with CCC, now that SD is having issues. I have recently purchased the licence for CCC and it seems to work nicely, just like SD used to ( although minus the smart clones to the OS volume - but as full clone only takes 10 mins, not a big deal like it was with my old HDD drive taking 1hr 30 mins )
Many thanks Mike.
As I tend not to be doing work on documents etc on the iMac, mostly used as a media hub with another drive holding my 5TB of media data, I'm thinking TM may not hold much advantage for me.
As already stated, because the full clone of the external boot SDD only takes 10 mins, I will probably stick solely with CCC, now that SD is having issues. I have recently purchased the licence for CCC and it seems to work nicely, just like SD used to ( although minus the smart clones to the OS volume - but as full clone only takes 10 mins, not a big deal like it was with my old HDD drive taking 1hr 30 mins )
Many thanks Mike.
Interesting. I take this to mean you are erasing the destination before each CCC clone so that every CCC run is a new full initial clone, which means it will use ASR to copy the System Volume. If you want to always have an up to date bootable clone, and for a small drive that only takes 10 minutes, this is probably a good strategy.
Note that CCC does do smart clones of the Data volume, but can't update the System Volume. Updating the System volume separately is a bit clunky so your way avoids this, at the expense of not having smart clones.
Thanks. Useful.....for general info, this method doesn't work for M1 Macs because ASR doesn't work for the System Volume on silicon macs.
Hey all,
Got a question here: I've done some checking on ShirtPocket's blog about SuperDuper. Seems like if I understand correctly, Dave said that NON bootable copies should still work on Big sur with SuperDuper.
I tried the other day to simply copy the user files with SD to an external drive. However, when I started the copy SuperDuper just sat there with a counter going, and not doing anything. the usual sections never turned green, or changed status as usual. In fact, the statuses were all greyed out. From what I understand, only the system part of the drive is protected, and the user data is on the regular part of the read / write volume. So I am curious, is Superduper completely dead on big sur, or is it still able to back up the user data. I really don't need SuperDuper at this point, however I still have my copy installed, and wanted to try just a data clone after reading Dave's latest post about non bootable backups working. Did I miss something, or is it supposed to just sit there for a long time. I never remember it doing that before.
Thanks
Got a question here: I've done some checking on ShirtPocket's blog about SuperDuper. Seems like if I understand correctly, Dave said that NON bootable copies should still work on Big sur with SuperDuper.
I tried the other day to simply copy the user files with SD to an external drive. However, when I started the copy SuperDuper just sat there with a counter going, and not doing anything. the usual sections never turned green, or changed status as usual. In fact, the statuses were all greyed out. From what I understand, only the system part of the drive is protected, and the user data is on the regular part of the read / write volume. So I am curious, is Superduper completely dead on big sur, or is it still able to back up the user data. I really don't need SuperDuper at this point, however I still have my copy installed, and wanted to try just a data clone after reading Dave's latest post about non bootable backups working. Did I miss something, or is it supposed to just sit there for a long time. I never remember it doing that before.
Thanks
I am using it now - you just need to follow the instructions on his blog at https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/. If you have not seen it, here are the instructions:
So, if you're on Big Sur, and you want to copy a startup drive, here's what to do:
- Make sure you have your license information handy. You can retrieve it from SuperDuper's Register... page should you need to.
- Download and install SuperDuper! v3.2.5 from here.
- Remove SuperDuper! from the "Full Disk Access" list in the Security & Privacy preference pane and restart your Mac. This is important, and works around an Apple bug triggered by the change of SuperDuper!'s bundle ID.
- Run SuperDuper and follow the steps to allow it Full Disk Access.
- If your license is missing, re-enter it from your license email.
- Turn off "Check for Updates" in our Preferences so we don't nag you about v3.3.1.
- Select the "Data" volume in the source pop-up, and a new APFS backup volume in the destination pop-up, along with "Backup - all files" (or whatever script you want). If you already have a backup volume, you can use Disk Utility to select and delete just the backup System volume, rather than create a new one. After doing this, rename the Data volume to something sensible (remove "- Data"). Note that you may need to repair it with Disk First Aid before it will show up in SuperDuper.
- Make your copy as normal, set up your schedule as needed, etc. Your regular Smart Updates will work as expected.
Hi there,
I followed the instructions, and the system would not acknowledge superDuper as authorized, even though it was in the list of full disk access, and had been quit and relaunched. So I've decided to just go with CCC since I also have a license for that, and time machine. As I mentioned. I don't need to use SuperDuper since I have the other options. I will just wait to see if an official update comes out. With this said, Why do people choose SuperDuper over CCC? Having used both, CCC seems to be a more flexible program, it copies the recovery partition to the target drive which SD doesn't do. So to me, even though I like both programs, CCC seems to be the better deal. Especially since it still works correctly, and SD doesn't.
I missed the restart part. I'll try again after restarting. Thanks again. I reinstalled 3.3.1, made sure to remove it from full disk access, rebooted, and then did 3.2.5 again removed it, and put it back in full disk access, and all seems good now. Thanks
Another lesson in not jumping on the latest OS if you work on your machine. Especially true for this release which brought a lot of changes.
As a whole, Big Sur has been a very positive experience for me. In the case of programs like SuperDuper, having read up on most recent posts: the switch to ARM is going to render third party backup solutions such as CCC, and Superduper useless for bootable backups. So going forward if people are going to switch and buy new macs: they're also going to have to put new solutions in place. Thankfully, still having an intel Mac CCC still makes bootable backups, and doing the current SuperDuper workaround makes data backups without the system. As a power user, this also brings up the question of wanting to stick with apple, or going with Windows, or Linux, or even BSD for more options and control over hardware, and software than apple is currently providing. It also seems like going forward macs going forward, at least to a degree are becoming more and more an average consumer product then they use to be.
OK here we are - Almost into May and no SuperCrapper for Big Sur. And, this developer, Dave, still has the audacity to still list his crapware for sale calling it "SuperDuper is the most advanced, yet easy to use disk copying program available for macOS." Give Me a Break🤮
Lou
Lou
SuperDuper can now do bootable clones of Big Sur for Intel AND M1, but only because Apple fixed asr in 11.4, still in beta..
I am sure Mike Bombich is working on this for CCC as well..
I am sure Mike Bombich is working on this for CCC as well..
@Earl Urley - thanks for that update - are you saying that you need to have installed the Public Beta of Big Sur 11.4 - I am still on 11.3 and I downloaded 3.5 B1 and it still cannot see the Backup volume?
Yes - that is what I thought and only yesterday I bought a CCC Licence!