a couple of questions about back up

jojoba said:

I'm currently using TimeMachine and SuperDuper to back up my Air.

I read somewhere that CCC backs up your Recovery HD whereas SuperDuper doesn't. What's the practical implication/advantage of that?.

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The Recovery partition is used to restore or repair your OS X installation. CCC does back up that partition and SD doesn't.

OS X: About OS X Recovery
How to Clean Install OS X Mountain Lion
Apple - OS X Recovery restores your Mac with a few clicks.
Hands on with Mountain Lion's OS X Recovery and Internet Recovery

jojoba said:

When I travel, I'd prefer to only bring one external hard drive along. Would it make sense to bring the one where I back up with TimeMachine or the one with SuperDuper? I back up to two separate drives that are partitioned, so both drives have one back up area and one general storage area. I guess the criteria would be whether I'd be worried about wanting a previous version of particular files (TM), or worried about the whole system crashing (SD) - is that right? I can't quite decide what would be most strategic.

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You can use CCC to backup versions of files, as well. Some prefer the TM interface. I use only CCC for all my backup needs.

jojoba said:

I think I might download the trial version of CCC and check it out.

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You can use version 3.5.1 ($40) or 3.4.7 (free, and works well on OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8).

Toss TimeMachine and SuperDuper and get CCC. I use the free version and it's never let me down and I love it.

I use SuperDuper! and Time Machine. I am not going to sell you on SuperDuper!, but rather how I see the two working together. Substitute CCC for SD in your case.

TM is for user errors, and SD is for hardware errors, in my opinion. If I lose the drive entirely, I'm not going to bother with TM - I'm going with SD to recover the lost drive to a new one. If I accidentally delete a file, I'm going to TM for the UI and ease of recovery.

If I my main system was mobile, I'd take SD with me on trips and leave TM behind. As Weaselboy has noted, you can boot from a SD or CCC backup HDD and just carry on. If your entire computer is lost or damaged, you can buy, borrow, rent another Mac and boot that system from your backup HDD - and just carry on. For that reason alone my SD (bootable) backup HDD is Firewire 800. It is slow, but not painfully so.

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You mention having your backup partitions on a HDD with a general storage partition. Just know that if that HDD goes bork, you lose both the stuff in the general storage area and the backup. If you can afford to lose the stuff in the general storage, then not a disaster. But if you need it then you may want to consider splitting where you keep your stuff and where you back up to.

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My external backup HDDs are small enough to fit into a safety deposit box. I have a few that I rotate so that I have one off-site at all times.