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Why I now prefer SuperDuper over Carbon Copy Cloner.

honestone33 said:
That does not seem to be the case. Here is the link for the Shirt Pocket site:

Shirt Pocket—SuperDuper! Heroic system recovery for mere mortals.

www.shirt-pocket.com www.shirt-pocket.com

I did a search of APFS, and only 1 "hit", but nothing about the recovery partition.

Next, here is the link for SuperDuper!:

SuperDuper! Classic — Shirt Pocket

www.shirt-pocket.com www.shirt-pocket.com

Doing a search for APFS does reveal this one statement:

"APFS recovery volume support"

But that does not have anything to do with the (hidden) Recovery HD partition created by a clean, fresh. "virgin" installation of the Mac OS. What it means is that one can do a recovery/restore with SuperDuper!, from an APFS formatted device/partition.
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Thanks for the clarification.
 
rpmurray said:
I'm surprised you didn't contact Bombich about the problem before throwing CCC under the bus. CCC has great customer support and I'm sure if he had a look at the logs he could have told you exactly why it was so slow.
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Cry me a river, I decided to try the alternative software rather than waste my time on contacting support, and was impressed with the result and shared my story. Some people may feel obliged to help develop someone else’s software and report bugs or problems or request support and wait, others are more impatient and after trying twice, thought hey why not try a different software to see if it makes a difference before assuming it’s a hardware problem; and that’s exactly what I did. I have no loyalty to either software and if in the future super duper fails my expectations as a backup solution, I’ll dump that software as quick as I did CCC and look for another.
 
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manny88 said:
Cry me a river, I decided to try the alternative software rather than waste my time on contacting support, and was impressed with the result and shared my story. Some people may feel obliged to help develop someone else’s software and report bugs or problems or request support and wait, others are more impatient and after trying twice, thought hey why not try a different software to see if it makes a difference before assuming it’s a hardware problem; and that’s exactly what I did. I have no loyalty to either software and if in the future super duper fails my expectations as a backup solution, I’ll dump that software as quick as I did CCC and look for another.
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Who was crying? How is it a "waste of time" to contact support when you're having a problem? What's with the attitude?

Some may find switching to an entirely different app as a solution for problems to be more of a waste of time.
 
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OP, could it be that you have find and replace corrupted files (or whatever it is called in English) enabled in CCC for every backup? This should take a lot longer than a "normal" backup without this activated option and maybe could explain the difference to SuperDuper ...
 
lars666 said:
OP, could it be that you have find and replace corrupted files (or whatever it is called in English) enabled in CCC for every backup? This should take a lot longer than a "normal" backup without this activated option and maybe could explain the difference to SuperDuper ...
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That's a good point. As it is, I am doing disk cleanup on my own just about every day. And prior to making my SuperDuper! backups for each of my Macs, I run Onyx and TechTool Pro to do some additional maintenance/cleanup. And every so often, I run Malwarebytes and ClamXAv to check for adware/malware/viruses. etc. All in my effort to keep my Macs "lean, mean, and clean".
 
SaSaSushi said:
Who was crying? How is it a "waste of time" to contact support when you're having a problem? What's with the attitude?

Some may find switching to an entirely different app as a solution for problems to be more of a waste of time.
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I think you’ve pretty much proved my point. People are unique, and what they deem is a waste of time might not be the same for others; and so their chosen avenue may differ to another persons expectations (in this case contacting support).

As for attitude, if people want to accuse me of throwing a software under the bus, then they can cry me a river. If they don’t like my response or attitude to that person, they can cry me a river. If they want to convince me that liking Cherry Coke over regular Coke (and my praise for it) is throwing regular Coke under the bus, they can cry me a river.

The purpose of my post was to share my recent experience with backing up my hard drive, and the enjoyment it gave me when it worked at a speed I didn’t expect using a software I never used before.

lars666 said:
OP, could it be that you have find and replace corrupted files (or whatever it is called in English) enabled in CCC for every backup? This should take a lot longer than a "normal" backup without this activated option and maybe could explain the difference to SuperDuper ...
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Yes I made sure it was turned off. Also the 2nd time I wiped the hard drive to do a fresh clone to see if would be any faster, so there shouldn’t have been any files to compare (and like I said I made sure that option was off).


I’m not particularly looking for a solution or reason why it didn’t work, as I’ve already switched software, cloned my drive, and upgraded to Catalina (my main reason for getting a clone/backup of my current OS first). I just wanted to share my recent backup experience.
 
lars666 said:
OP, could it be that you have find and replace corrupted files (or whatever it is called in English) enabled in CCC for every backup? This should take a lot longer than a "normal" backup without this activated option and maybe could explain the difference to SuperDuper ...
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Isn't SuperDuper said to abort when it encounters corrupted files?
 
manny88 said:
As for attitude, if people want to accuse me of throwing a software under the bus, then they can cry me a river. If they don’t like my response or attitude to that person, they can cry me a river. If they want to convince me that liking Cherry Coke over regular Coke (and my praise for it) is throwing regular Coke under the bus, they can cry me a river.
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I obviously can't speak for the person you were replying to but it didn't seem to me like he was throwing anything under a bus.

I also happen to own and love Carbon Copy Cloner and it's possible you might have resolved your problems with it by contacting Bombich. They have excellent customer support.

I've used SuperDuper in the past and have nothing negative to say about it either. Whatever works for the individual user is what's best.
 
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The Hammer said:
Isn't SuperDuper said to abort when it encounters corrupted files?
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As far as I understand it, when checking this extra option with CCC, there's a checksum compare of every file which takes much more time. I can't imagine that this is enabled by standard in SuperDuper, as I am sure it would also be in CCC if the time difference of the backup was marginal. It takes a lot more hours this extra cautious way, I think, that's why CCC offers to disable it or only do it every X backups or so.
 
I am a long time SuperDuper user currently running Mojave. in regards to the question of whether or not SuperDuper backs up the hidden recovery partition, when I run the utiltity EtreCheck, it does show in the "Storage" section of the report the recovery partitions on the cloned external drives. It would seem therefore that they are being copied by Super Duper.
 
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MarkC426 said:
I have never seen this.
In all the years of using SuperDuper, a clone has never failed or not completed.
Maybe I just don’t have any corrupted files....... 😛
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Same with me. However, I occasionally run Malwarebytes and ClamXAv to try and find any adware/malware/viruses. Almost all the time, my machines are clean, in that regard.
 
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Have been backing up from iMac Fusion to external SATA over USB 3 using CCC for five years without issue or slowness issues. I am very satisfied CCC customer, too...
 
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jlgg said:
I am a long time SuperDuper user currently running Mojave. in regards to the question of whether or not SuperDuper backs up the hidden recovery partition, when I run the utiltity EtreCheck, it does show in the "Storage" section of the report the recovery partitions on the cloned external drives. It would seem therefore that they are being copied by Super Duper.
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If anyone else can confirm this; it would be great. Because it is routinely stated otherwise.
 
Well, it looks like I (and others) stand corrected. I downloaded EtreCheck and ran it, and sure enough, on my external Samsung 850 Pro 512 gig SSD, both of my SuperDuper! backups (one for my late 2012 Mac Mini, the other for my mid 2017 MacBook Air) contained the (hidden) Recovery HD partition! Talk about being surprised.

Here is a screen shot of that part of the EtreCheck report:

Screen Shot 2019-10-31 at 7.29.17 PM.png


What is missing, though, is the eDrive partition created by TechTool Pro on my Mac MIni, ie, on disk0s2. Disk Utility does show it, but EtreCheck does not show it at all.

I wonder, though, why the sizes of the 3 Recovery partitions are different. On the Mac Mini, it is 507 MB, but on the two SuperDuper! backups, they are 521 MB and 515 MB.
 
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Well, it looks like the 4th beta of SuperDuper! (V3.3 B4) fixed an issue that arose with Beta 3:

"Beta 3 gave an error when using bless to bless the drive."

"Beta 4 fixes the false error indication: once installed, bless will not give a false failure."

So, progress is being made!
 
I've used SD for many years and have always been satisfied. But I am curious as to why they did not have a Catalina compatible version ready for Catalina release. Seems like CCC had been working on their Catalina compatible version prior to Catalina's release and compatible version ready to go with the release of Catalina. Any thoughts?
 
mic j said:
I've used SD for many years and have always been satisfied. But I am curious as to why they did not have a Catalina compatible version ready for Catalina release. Seems like CCC had been working on their Catalina compatible version prior to Catalina's release and compatible version ready to go with the release of Catalina. Any thoughts?
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That seems to be the case recently, but I for one am glad Shirt Pocket software is taking their time. If you read the blog, it seems that there are always some issues that keep "pooping" up with the beta testing. But as long as they get it right, I am happy.

As it is, Micromat is even slower in getting a version of TechTool Pro ready for a new Mac OS. In fact, it seems to be getting later and later. For Sierra, it was November 2016, for High Sierra it was December 2017, and for Mojave, it was January 2019. The issue is that Apple does not release enough details early on in the development of the new Mac OS, and also the new APFS that was introduced with High Sierra definitely was a challenge. And TechTool Pro is the ONLY maintenance/repair third party product that works fine with APFS. Drive Genius, and even the venerable Disk Warrior, still have issues with APFS.

Finally, I have yet to see anything "earth shattering" in any new Mac OS that I need to have right away. I am content to wait for the .2 or .3 release, so that just about all the bugs are worked out.
 
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honestone33 said:
That seems to be the case recently, but I for one am glad Shirt Pocket software is taking their time. If you read the blog, it seems that there are always some issues that keep "pooping" up with the beta testing. But as long as they get it right, I am happy.

As it is, Micromat is even slower in getting a version of TechTool Pro ready for a new Mac OS. In fact, it seems to be getting later and later. For Sierra, it was November 2016, for High Sierra it was December 2017, and for Mojave, it was January 2019. The issue is that Apple does not release enough details early on in the development of the new Mac OS, and also the new APFS that was introduced with High Sierra definitely was a challenge. And TechTool Pro is the ONLY maintenance/repair third party product that works fine with APFS. Drive Genius, and even the venerable Disk Warrior, still have issues with APFS.

Finally, I have yet to see anything "earth shattering" in any new Mac OS that I need to have right away. I am content to wait for the .2 or .3 release, so that just about all the bugs are worked out.
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Thanks for your thoughts. Just checked out ChronoSync and they have released a Catalina compatible version as well. So, both CCC and ChronoSync appear to have had enough information from Apple to get their versions out in a timely manner...but maybe they are having "beta" issues in the release. Just don't know.

I agree with you about waiting to upgrade Mac OS, but one feature I really would like is the ability to upgrade my iOS AND be able to sync Reminders between my phone and Mac. Until I update the Mac, I won't be able to do that. At least that is my understanding.
 
Latest status of Catalina-compatible version of SuperDuper!:

Shirt Pocket Watch

www.shirt-pocket.com www.shirt-pocket.com

Most likely, when V3.3 is released, it will be backwards compatible with at least 2 or 3 prior versions of the Mac OS. So, when it is released, I should be able to use it with Mojave (I'm waiting for the Catalina-compatible version of TechTool Pro to be released. Will most likely be in December or January).
 
robgendreau said:
I own Super Duper and have owned Carbon Copy Cloner too, but I now prefer ChronoSync for tasks I once did with those programs. Does bootable clones and much much more, even file synching to iOS. Free upgrades forever too. If shopping around consider it as well.
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Wow, that really takes me back. I used to use ChronoSync in like the mid 2000s when I used it to keep files on a flash drive current and synced with my Mac at home. I remember it having a LOT of options but being very powerful once you got it all figured out.
 
SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner have always offered free upgrades. I've always been able to download and install each and every SuperDuper! update.
 
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