Super Duper for cloning drives?

[stanw]

I just downloaded Super Duper and want to use it to keep a separate/external bare bones drive for photos cloned onto another empty drive. I tried it earlier, and it seemed to work great, though I have 75,000 photos so I am a bit concerned if it copied every file over. Anyone have any negative experiences with Super Duper? Any thoughts in general about it?

Thanks.

 

[Ray2]

I just downloaded Super Duper and want to use it to keep a separate/external bare bones drive for photos cloned onto another empty drive. I tried it earlier, and it seemed to work great, though I have 75,000 photos so I am a bit concerned if it copied every file over. Anyone have any negative experiences with Super Duper? Any thoughts in general about it?

Thanks.

I've used it for probably 10 years now to perform nightly backups on 2 internals and an external with images files. Works like a charm, always has. Something I can't say for early versions of some of its competitors. Great support as well.

 

[Manic Harmonic]

You should be able to double check by doing this in the terminal:

diff -r /Volumes/drive1 /Volumes/drive2

 

[stanw]

Do you use Super Duper instead of Time Machine? If so, just curious why? I use Time Machine for my main OS/Applications but have a bunch of bare bones drives that I have been literally dragging all of my folders/files from one a drive to an empty one to back them up. I will now use Super Duper for all of the bare bones drives.

I've used it for probably 10 years now to perform nightly backups on 2 internals and an external with images files. Works like a charm, always has. Something I can't say for early versions of some of its competitors. Great support as well.

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1. I'm assuming that both drives need to be connected prior to entering this into Terminal?
2. What will this tell me? The number of files copied over during the last clone? OR the total number of files on both drives?

Thanks!!!

You should be able to double check by doing this in the terminal:

diff -r /Volumes/drive1 /Volumes/drive2

 

[Weaselboy]

Do you use Super Duper instead of Time Machine? If so, just curious why?

The advantage of SD over TM is with a SD backup disk you can attach the disk and option key boot to it and continue to use your computer if say you had an internal drive failure. With TM you would need to replace the intern; drive then use the TM disk to restore to the new drive before you could use the computer again. If the ability to boot and run from the backup drive is not important to you, you really don't need to use SD.

If you do want to run a clone app like SD, I prefer the app Carbon Copy Cloner because it backs up the recovery partition while SD does not.

 

[atlatnesiti]

If you do want to run a clone app like SD, I prefer the app Carbon Copy Cloner because it backs up the recovery partition while SD does not.

Yeh, CCC is my choice as well, but unfortunately is not Yosemite compatible yet

 

[Manic Harmonic]

Do you use Super Duper instead of Time Machine? If so, just curious why? I use Time Machine for my main OS/Applications but have a bunch of bare bones drives that I have been literally dragging all of my folders/files from one a drive to an empty one to back them up. I will now use Super Duper for all of the bare bones drives.



----------

1. I'm assuming that both drives need to be connected prior to entering this into Terminal?
2. What will this tell me? The number of files copied over during the last clone? OR the total number of files on both drives?

Thanks!!!

Yes, both drives need to be connected, that command will tell you if there's any differences in the files on the drive. If everything is exactly the same then it should output nothing (except for maybe some .DS_Store files etc.), if there's files missing or changed on one drive it will tell you. It might screw things up if the time stamps are different but since the drive is a clone they should be the same.

 

[Weaselboy]

Yeh, CCC is my choice as well, but unfortunately is not Yosemite compatible yet

Correct... but it will be by the time Yosemite ships.

 

[Ray2]

Do you use Super Duper instead of Time Machine? If so, just curious why? I use Time Machine for my main OS/Applications but have a bunch of bare bones drives that I have been literally dragging all of my folders/files from one a drive to an empty one to back them up. I will now use Super Duper for all of the bare bones drives.
Thanks!!!

I use for a very specific reason. We split our time between 2 homes (Europe and USA). A clone gives me the ability to grab a small bus driven drive and clone it to the machine at the other location. When we leave there, I do it again at the former location.

My wife and I travel a lot as well. That small drive has partitions for her MBA's clone as well as the desktop clone. Making the latter available wherever we go by either booting off it or accessing it for data. For 4 iOS device syncs during travel and updates its nice, if not essential, to have it all in one place.

I'm talking about 1.5tb of data in a very small OWC Express enclosure. That's a very small package that brings us a lot of utility.