[jrdub]

As Dan Frakes pointed out above, the big feature of Super Duper 2.5 is the fact that you can use ONE drive for both SuperDuper clones and Time Machine backups. Try doing that with Carbon Copy Cloner and watch it blow away all your Time Machine backups. Dave's logic (the author of SD) was that people don't want to buy two backup drives. They want to have one drive do it all and SD does this and it is AWESOME!! You can have a bootable Time Machine drive and use TM in real time to restore backups of previous versions of files and emails that may have been inadvertently changed or deleted.

[Tom_Diola]

I've downloaded SD 2.5 and did a complete backup and boot from the external. It all works.
Incrementals take about 30 mins.
Until they make Time Machine just like SD I don't plan on using it.

[jrdub]

I guess I don't understand why people continue to think of TM as an alternative to SD or vice versa. They are only similar in that they are both ways to backup your drive(s) but they are wonderful complements to each other. SD makes a bootable clone, which TM cannot do. TM makes versioned backups of all your files which SD cannot do. I've used TM many times to restore emails that were accidentally deleted and to find earlier versions of files I had changed for clients who then decided they wanted the original version. Can anyone honestly say they've never deleted something from their hard drive and then wished to God they had that file back?? If you back up nightly (as you should) using SD, and you deleted something days or weeks ago that you now need back...well too bad if you use just SD.
On the other hand...
If your hard drive crashes and you don't have time to go buy another, install it in your computer and then run the TM restore procedure, you'll be thanking your lucky stars you have SD installed on your TM drive because now you just change the boot drive (assuming the drive is firewire or internal, of course) and you're all set. You don't have to burn a workday or two trying to get all the pieces put back together.
This isn't an either-or argument unless you have seriously limited space on your backup drive.

[TosaDeac]

Thanks for that explanation. I like the idea of using both for exactly the reasons you stated. I'm away from my Mac so I can't play with it now, but I have just a quick technical question...do I need to partition my external hard drive to use both SD and TM? or does the update of SD just allow both to work without having to go that extra step?

I have a firewire connected hard drive that is bigger than my internal one (320gb vs 250gb), so I should have enough room to clone with SD and still use TM but do you think having a 500gb external drive would be better?

Also I read there is an option to have TM back up not exactly everything so maybe that would save some space as well.

[jrdub]

You can leave your hard drive as one partition and SD just knows not to touch the TM data. That's the beauty. They live together as one. TM won't interfere with SD's files either. There obviously is some redundancy of data there but I'm all about redundancy when it comes to backing things up!

I would recommend going to the 500 Gb drive if you can. But, if not, as you mentioned, you can keep TM from backing up certain folders and files to save on space. For example, you can keep your System folder and/or your Applications folder from being backed up (for more info: http://www.macworld....machine2.html). Just go into System Preferences, select TM, then options and exclude to your heart's content. Obviously that makes it so TM won't restore your drive. But you have SD so you don't need it. You can always use Migration Assistant to restore any files that weren't included in SD's backup but were backed up by TM. For examle, if you backed up a week ago and your drive crashed now, you'd restore your SD backup and let Migration Assistant grab all the data from the past week off of Time Machine (assuming you didn't exclude what you are looking for). You can use MA for docs, music, video, email, anything.

The more room you give TM the more versions of files it will store. TM is configured to make 24 backups per day (1 per hour), one backup per day for the past week (except today for which there are 24 backups), one backup per week of the month (excluding this week for which there are daily and hourly backups) and one backup per month (excluding this month for which there are weekly, daily and hourly backups). But if TM runs out of space, it will start deleting older backups, leaving you sometimes without needed files from the past. So the more room you can spare, the more complete of a backup system you will have.

[TosaDeac]

Does updating that frequently slow down your computer?

[jrdub]

No TM only backs up what has changed. It's like SD in that way - smart updating. The brilliant part of TM is you can disconnect the drive for days and then reconnect it and it knows everything that was changed in that time and will automatically back up upon connection. I find TM runs for about half a minute (at most) each hour when I'm at my computer. When it's asleep or there isn't activity that hour, I'm sure it backs up even less or not at all. I'm running a MB Pro but it's shouldn't really be that noticeably different on older or slower machines.

[dmod415]

Quote

{quote:title=jrdub wrote:}
As Dan Frakes pointed out above, the big feature of Super Duper 2.5 is the fact that you can use ONE drive for both SuperDuper clones and Time Machine backups. Try doing that with Carbon Copy Cloner and watch it blow away all your Time Machine backups. Dave's logic (the author of SD) was that people don't want to buy two backup drives. They want to have one drive do it all and SD does this and it is AWESOME!! {quote}

It doesn't MATTER that people don't WANT to buy two backup drives. They NEED to protect their accumulated work product reliably. Effective people understand the importance of separating NEEDS from WANTS and giving the former priority when resource limitations force a choice.

Anyone that buys one HUGE big-buck drive and leaves it hooked up to their computer for time machine backups is the proverbial ostrich with their head in the sand. With theft, fire and/or water damage, flood, earthquake, hurricane or tornado... whatever gets your computer also gets your "backups". Duh?

Buy two inexpensive drives and partition each for (1) a SuperDuper clone of your working "system", (2) archival data that either doesn't change or seldom changes (like an annual tax record folder you add to once a year), and (3) Time Machine (if you value what it does). Keep one such drive at a secure remote location and switch them at least weekly. Disconnect and hide the one you use daily overnight and when away. I use OWC Neptunes (at less than $100 each) and have found each absolutely reliable (with SuperDuper, which I can't praise enough...thanks Dave) for over two years.

No matter what happens, on average you are likely to lose only the last few days of activity. If you don't do heavy photo or music activity, back up only new or modified work product onto a thumb drive each night and keep it with you. If you work in a high-security environment, don't do the latter unless you won the place ;<)