SuperDuper!
Backup Saves The Day
28 November 2005 Justin Williams Skip to comments
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Backing up your data is the most important task that most computer users don't do. In this review, Justin Williams outlines the newest client on the block: SuperDuper 2.0 from Shirt Pocket Software.
A little over a year ago we put out an article entitled Backing Up Your Mac outlining some of the choice backup offerings for Mac OS X. In the article, we found that backup application preferences are like taste in cars — everyone has a different opinion. There has been a healthy discussion in the comments of the article where readers have debated the pros and cons of each backup application on the Mac market.
One application we failed to cover in our first article that is mentioned often in the comments is SuperDuper from Shirt Pocket Software. Shirt Pocket is the creation of Dave Nanian and Bruce Lacey. Shirt Pocket’s first product, netTunes, is a Macworld Eddy winning iTunes remote that works via Bonjour.
After netTunes (and its sister application launchTunes) Shirt Pocket wanted to create a backup application that removed the complexity of the process. The developers wanted to cover the “99% case”, as Dave outlined it in a recent blog post.
Version 2.0 of SuperDuper has been in development for exactly a year and is now ready for the world to use. Before we dive into the application itself, it would be beneficial to outline exactly why backing up your data is necessary.
Backup? No way!
One of the most vulnerable points of any person’s computing life is their lack of a backup. Our computers are filled with gigabytes of songs, thousands of photos and hundreds of important documents that we couldn’t fathom losing. The trouble is that if the hard drive in our Mac decides to malfunction, we no longer have that data without a backup. All those photos and songs? Gone. All those documents? Gone.
With a regular backup regimen you can ensure that your data is saved in the event of a hardware failure. Personally, I run a nightly backup of my home directory onto a secondary Firewire hard drive and then export my most important documents to an offsite server. While extreme, I have suffered from data loss and never want to experience it again.
What’s So Super?
SuperDuper has all of the features we have come to expect in a backup application. The application features two main ways to back up an application. The first is to do a straight clone of the data set you want to replicate. The second is dubbed Smart Update by Shirt Pocket. After doing an initial clone of your data set, Smart Update scans your clone and detects any changes in the data. If it detects a change, it updates the replica to reflect it. One neat aspect of SuperDuper is that if you have used a previous backup application such as Synk, Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect’s duplicate feature to perform a cloning operation, you can perform a Smart Update on that data set rather than starting fresh.
In terms of backup location options, you have the ability to back up to internal or external drive, or a disk image stored locally on on a network volume. You can also schedule backups via version 2.0’s new scheduler. You can schedule your backups to run during a certain week, specific days or at a scheduled time. You can schedule multiple backups based on the drive or disk image.
When you perform a backup using SuperDuper, you have the ability to run shell scripts before or after each backup session. You can also install a package or create a secondary disk image of your backup set after each session runs. This is useful for more advanced users. For instance, I created a shell script that sends a text message to my cell phone if it detects any major errors at the end of my backup session. I also created a script that runs prior to my session that erases the /tmp/ and Cache folders on my system so that it isn’t backed up.
At the conclusion of a backup session you can also have your system shut down, restart or just have the SuperDuper application quit.
One of the finer points of SuperDuper is its auto-update feature. When you launch the application it checks to see if a newer version is available. If it is, you have the option of downloading and installing the new version. With many applications this process involves opening a Web browser, going to the product’s site and downloading a disk image containing the updated application. With SuperDuper, all of this is taken care of internally. The updated executable is downloaded, installed and SuperDuper is relaunched. Very slick.
Running A Backup
When you run a backup using SuperDuper the main view morphs and shows a step-by-step process of what what the application is doing.
The first step is preparing both the source and destination of the backup session. Next, SuperDuper begins to clone your drive or to check an existing clone for any changes using Smart Update. This is the most time-consuming step and shows a progress bar to let you know how long the task will take. Once completed, SuperDuper shows any of your after-session scripts being run. Finally, it displays whether the application will quit or if your Mac will sleep, restart, shut down or just sit idle.
The Sandbox
So, what is the Sandbox? Well, in short, Shirt Pocket markets Sandbox as system recovery without downtime. Generally defined, sandboxes are bootable replicas of your Macintosh system stored on a secondary hard drive or partition. The sandbox shares all of your personal documents and data with the original.
In the digital security world, administrators use sandboxes to test the latest security patches, application updates and other critical system changes before deploying them on a larger scale. At my job as a Mac OS X administrator, I have several sandbox systems that I deploy the latest OS X updates to and run tests against before sending the update out to my 60+ machines. It’s much easier to diagnose and repair a single system with a problem than to find out that the same problem has replicated across all of my network’s machines.
When we were upgrading to Mac OS X 10.2.8 at the office, I ran into an issues where several of my machines were unable to connect to the Internet because their Ethernet connections were disabled. This was a major bug in the 10.2.8 release and caused it to be retracted while a fix was in place. Foolish and naive, I had already deployed the update to several systems and had to re-image several of the machines back to 10.2.7. If I had a digital sandbox in place at that time to deploy to, I could have hopefully found the issue with the OS X update and avoided all the trouble.
Using SuperDuper’s Sandbox feature on any of these troubles machines, I could have reverted back to a previous revision of my Mac with only a few minutes of downtime. Whenever you run an errant update on your system and it causes trouble, you can change your Mac OS X startup disk to be the sandbox.
Creating a sandbox can be a time-consuming process, initially. You must have a separate partition or hard drive to deploy the sandbox to. Shirt Pocket provides an excellent tutorial as part of its manual on how to create the secondary partition. If you have iPartition from Coriolis you can simplify the partitioning process.
SuperDuper comes with two predefined scripts for creating and updating a Sandbox. The first script allows both verisons of your system to share the Users and Applications folders. The second script only shares the Users directory. When you want to test something on your system but fear it may cause problems, you should boot from your Sandbox and run the updates. If things work correctly, you can perform a Smart Update to your regular system, and things will be synchronized.
Sandbox is nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary, but its implementation makes it simple for anyone to implement advanced precautionary measures in their computing regimen. The only issue users may run into is that they may be uncomfortable partitioning their hard drive. If you are uncomfortable with that, I would suggest finding a computer-savvy friend to do it for you.
Scripting Copies
SuperDuper has the ability to create custom copy scripts that allow you to backup, ignore or share specific locations on your drive. Copy scripts aren’t scripts in the way shell scripts are. Rather, they provide you with a flexible way to select a set of files and the actions to perform on the files in that set. In a user-defined script you can also include other scripts. The application comes with 18 predefined scripts for general tasks such as sharing developer tools or excluding your Spotlight search index.
Creating a script is not as easy as I would like it to be. When I imagine creating a copy script I would prefer it to have the same user interface as a Smart Playlist in iTunes or a Smart Folder in the Finder. For example, if I wanted to create a script that copied only the Documents in my home directory, I would want the ability to select that criteria from pulldown menus rather than using wildcards and setting multiple save locations. I imagine something like this would be possible by harnessing Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight metadata index, but at present time SuperDuper’s lowest target is Mac OS X Panther which obviously doesn’t support Spotlight.
One addition I would also like to see is being able to specify a backup location to be a previously created Smart Folder if the user is running Tiger.
The Final Verdict
SuperDuper 2.0 is an excellent backup application for Mac OS X and has now replaced Synk as my default backup solution. I like how Shirt Pocket was able to combine such a simple interface with such a powerful feature set. The application is not only accessible to novices with its predefined backup scripts but also doesn’t insult power users such as myself because it allows for the creation of advanced custom scripts. This application embodies everything that a great Mac OS X application should be.
Aside from my previous suggestions for improvements in future versions, I would like to see the users guide take advantage of the native Mac OS X help interface rather than using PDF documentation. I inquired as to why Shirt Pocket used PDF rather than Help.
The PDF manual was selected because many (*many*) users are uncomfortable with the concepts behind backing up and need quite a bit of material to understand and be confident about what the program is doing and how they should use it.
With a PDF manual, I could go more “long form” and address their needs in both a task-based and narrative flow 14, while still retaining some resemblance of “linkability” through the built-in PDF TOC, Preview’s search capabilities and the internal hyperlinks. And, on top of that, a PDF prints well. This is helpful for users who wish to have a printed copy of the Guide to refer to in case their computer should crash and they need to recovery but can’t get to the application!
While I agree with many of the sentiments I also believe that the tradeoffs aren’t worth migrating away from the approved help solution for Mac OS X. With Mac OS X Tiger, the Help Center has never been better. You can read more of my thoughts on this subject in an entry I posted on my personal blog, carpeaqua.
I highly recommend SuperDuper to any Mac user that values their pictures, music and other personal data. Not having a backup is like driving a car without a seat belt. While you may be fine 99% of the time, it’s that 1% where there is an accident or failure that is going to hurt.
SuperDuper is available from Shirt Pocket Software and sells for $27.95.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (9)
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#1) On November 30, 2005 10:21 PM
I’m afriad I utterly disagree with your suggestion of using Help rather than a PDF manual. A PDF manual is superior in every case. Except perhaps the case of help and a PDF manual.
There is nothing worse than firing up some complex new software only to discover no manual and a skimpy help page-or-two with comments like “To do X select X from the edit menu.”.. Adobe Golive is a particuarily painful memory of this for me.
Please stick with proper documentation…
#2) On November 30, 2005 10:28 PM
You can have proper documentation with Apple Help. Its entirely up to the developer to write good documentation and prep it for Apple Help.
#3) On November 30, 2005 10:33 PM
is it faster than Carbon cloner?
#4) On December 9, 2005 7:00 PM
Yes, it is defiantly fast and slicker than Carbon Copy Cloner
#5) On December 16, 2005 12:45 AM
SuperDuper! is indeed great… With Retrospect’s horrific UI, I never knew whether I had it set up right or, when it completed, I never knew whether it worked or didn’t. Not so with SuperDuper!.
But, it required a lot of horsing around to get it to email the log each day. (I eventually got it working with the combination of a shell procedure and an Automator script.) The log is buried inside one of those special application/package folders. Starting up SuperDuper! each morning just to read the log is too inconvenient.
Best would be a feature in SuperDuper! itself to email a summary with a link (or attachment) to the log itself.
#6) On December 30, 2005 8:34 AM
Marc, I totally agree with you about Retrospect’s horrific UI.
I will be checking out this software as soon as I can.
#7) On January 14, 2006 10:14 AM
I’ve tried the rest and with SuperDuper I’m using the best. After using other backup software from major companies and having little success in duplicating my computer’s hard drive successfully (errors half way through, backup not bootable, etc. etc.), I found success using SuperDuper. The main application you can download and use for free and paying to activate the advanced features is not absolutely necessary. However, the advanced features will make for easier and faster future backups, making the low cost for this program worth investing in. This program worked so well that I really believed I needed to pay for this program and support the developers even if I didn’t have to.
#8) On January 16, 2006 9:27 AM
This is a really great piece of software: I use SuperDuper! to generate a bootable clone of my PowerBook’s (OS X 10.4) hard drive every night, before I go home from the lab, or at home during dinner. The first, full copy took about 2 hours for 40 GB of data (ca. 1/2 million files) to an external FireWire hard disk. That’s ok. However, the Smart Update of the backup takes currently only 18 minutes (!), which is terrific! Also, the clone boots without further manual adjustments, so in case of a HDD failure I am up in no time, and could even continue to work “as usual” by booting the PowerBook from the external device (which is of course not recommendable, because one should of course first secure the data, but suppose my laptop fell down on the way to printing my PhD thesis, I would at least have the option…). Tested it, worked right away!
Ok, a “Pro” version of SuperDuper! would be nice, with all the stuff that’s needed to e.g. restore the state of a file from a given date, for those who need the extra safety.
But for everyone else (the “average guy”), this is a great solution. So if you just want your data to be secure in case of a hardware failure (believe me, this will eventually happen), and a variety of scenarios of stupidity, please spend the $28 on SuperDuper! and run SmartUpdate or at least a User data backup every night (alternating two disks, e.g. at daily backup at work with a weekend backup at home, gives you an additional boost in data security).
Having some background in Linux, I have been using RsyncX (a OS X adaptation of UNIX’s rsync) to clone my laptop’s hard disk, but I consider the money well-spend on SD!. The reason I do not only backup user data, but also clone the disk, is that re-installing all the scientific software I have in use would probably take a week. Get yourself one or two external disks (FireWire for booting) and get used to securing your data!
#9) On March 12, 2006 12:39 PM
I have a PB 12” 60gb and an external 100gb portable firewire drive. Does Super Duper have a function to back-up both of this disks to one external drive, or do I have to have 2 different destination disks?