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SuperDuper! or Time Machine?

OrangeSVTguy

OrangeSVTguy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Sep 16, 2007
4,127
69
Northeastern Ohio
So what does everyone mainly use for their backups? I've never used Time Machine before but I've used SuperDuper! quite a bit, is the automatic backup feature on SD! better then TM? If so then I'd rather buy the full version of SD! then use TM. I just bought a 500gb drive so I'm going to be picking up another for my backup. For Time Machine should the drive be bigger then the Target drive or is the same size OK?

What do you use and/or what do you prefer? Thanks.
 
Time Machine and SuperDuper! are NOT competing products; each serves a specific purpose that the other does not (or not well). I use both regularly both at home and at work. TM provides a rolling backup in time and is great for recovering a file that you may have deleted recently or even months ago, but is not a viable solution for a full restore IMHO and cannot provide a bootable image. SuperDuper! OTOH is great for creating a bootable clone that can be used to recover quickly from an OS upgrade that went wrong or a hard disk crash, but cannot be used to recover files that did not exist at the time of the last backup. They each serve their intended purposes well. If I had a choice of only one, however, I would unhesitatingly go with SuperDuper! (full version).

EDIT: BTW, the Leopard versions of SD! support putting TM backups on the same disk partition as your clone. SD will not erase or change these TM backups when it updates the clone image. I have never used this capability, as I keep my SD and TM backups on separate drives.
 
I use SD and TM on one drive, but also have two other drives specifically for SD backups/mirrors. SD has saved my butt once when I was on the road (travel with a 2.5" FW drive that acts as a mirror). TM almost came in handy a few times, but colleagues supplied lost files quicker than my TM backup. Still, good to know it was there.

I always tell people to buy SD and at least two external drives (one for off-site).
 
Use a combo of the two. They are not the same thing. I have two external HDD and one houses my TM backups and the other my SD backups.
 
sorry for bumping an old thread this this cleared a bunch of questions I've had. I was reading a thread about backups and I got super scared and realized I've been taking things for granted lately. So I'm buying a 500GB with ext. case right now on newegg and gonna grab a copy of superduper once it arrives and get on a better path. Hopefully in a few months I can finally upgrade to leopard and start using TM as well.

thanks for the previous comments!
 
both

Both as mentioned above.

Get as large a drive as you can for Time Machine. I use a 1TB that I partitioned into two: 800GB for time machine and 200GB for misc.

I use three external drives for superduper. I rotate between them. Most recent is at home. The prior one gets taken to work for an offsite backup and the one from work returns home and will become the most recent the next time I backup. I'll update all three right before a trip and one will travel with me to provide on the road backups or worse case... a bootable drive in case the internal drive fails. I'll usually mail that drive home at the end of my trip.

Time machine is convenient for it's intended purpose. Super Duper provides peace of mind for a drive loss. Being able to plug it in and boot up will get you up and running in a minute.

If I had to choose one... SuperDuper
 
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