SuperDuper v Timemachine

Good in their own right, SuperDuper makes a bootable backup, while Time Machine makes you go back to previous versions of files.

 

I use both. From what I hear Carbon Copy Cloner is functionally the same as SuperDuper!

I see SuperDuper! (or CCC) as a good catastrophic failure backup. If the hard-drive crashes suddenly and totally, recovery is easiest with SD!. You simply put a new HDD into the system, boot from SD! backup, and "clone" your system back to the new HDD. I've also been having issue lately with needing to "repair" my system HDD file structure. I've been booting off of the SD! backup rather than install disks.

TimeMachine is for recovering files individually (in my situation). Because it keeps a copy of everything going back as far as space allows, I can recover a file from a week ago or a month ago. If you delete file today, then the next time SD! runs it is deleted from the SD! backup as well. However TM will still have it available.

In conjunction with each other, if I have catastrophic failure in the middle of the day, I should be able to use both SD! and TM to recover to the point of the last TM backup.

Hope this helps.

 

I agree with this. To each their own, but in my opinion one can never be too careful when it comes to backing up. I've seen too many hard drives go bad and people lose EVERYTHING because they had no back up.

I use SuperDuper for a bootable clone, and use the 'smart update' feature about twice a month, and use time machine daily. It may be overkill, but it makes me feel better and I know if something happened to my MacBook Pro, all is NOT lost!

 

Carbon Copy Cloner, which is free, can make incremental backups, a feature that SuperDuper! requires you to pay for. Also, CCC can archive earlier versions of files, which SD can't.

 

The most important thing with backups is...well, keeping up with your backup schedule I tend to just unplug my external and forget about backing up after several incremental backups...just how it happens for me. I ended up getting going cloud (CrashPlan and SpiderOak) for backing up my files and it's been working great for me.

That said, I've been using SuperDuper for a long time and it's great. I did hear great reviews on CCC and that it's pretty much a free duplicate of SuperDuper. If your'e going the SD route, I'd try CCC. Like what others said, SD/CCC gives you the option of literally making a carbon copy of your drive that you could boot off from in case of any failure. TimeMachine is more focused on backing up and maintaining versions of individual files.

I'd go with the CCC + TimeMachine combination route if you're able to grab an extra HDD space (they're cheap now anyway). If you're like me and often get lazy with backup sets and willing to pay for cloud backup, I'd check out CrashPlan+.

 

I used Time Machine plus SuperDuper, but eventually I stopped using time Machine since I didn't feel it was worth it (FOR ME). I just do regular clone backups to 4 different HDDs using SuperDuper. I haven't lost a file since I bought a Mac 6 years ago, so Time Machine didn't have much appeal for me. But, as others point out, the important thing is to do the backups and do it regularly. Also I think it's important to have more than one external backup that is not always connected to the machine.

 

It's essentially what I have..... but of course that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best course of action.

Just make sure your TM partition is bigger than your system drive. The point TM is that it stores files that you have deleted from your system drive. The more space it has, the more "old" files it can retain before flushing them to make room for newer stuff. Do a search, there is some good advice on how much bigger TM should be on the 'net.

One of the cool things that a bootable backup can do, that hasn't been mentioned I believe, is that you can boot another Mac from the bootable backup. So, if your main work/school Mac goes burpf you can borrow someone else's Mac to use with your bootable backup. The borrowed Mac "becomes" your Mac (within the limits of the available hardware of course) and you can use it as if you are sitting at your own Mac. I used my MBP for 10 days as if it were my Mac Pro during repairs. If you anticipate doing this, I will tell you that booting from a USB external HDD is painful.... FW 800 is a much better option, if you can use it.

Luck.

 

Doesn't Super Duper use up an entire HD? I mean, it doesn't make an .iso or something that is just a file (like Acronis for PC). If you look at a SD drive, it has uncompressed files that look just like your original Mac drive.