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October 24, 2007

troubleshooting

Friendly notice: SuperDuper! is not yet Leopard compatible

Posted Oct. 24, ’07, 6:12 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Troubleshooting

SuperDuper! The absolute top, most necessary step in any Leopard upgrade is to backup. I personally recommend using SuperDuper!. Anyway, David Nanian has written a blog entry warning users of Leopard incompatibility.

First, v2.1.4 of SuperDuper! is not fully compatible with Leopard.

Changes were made to Leopard since our last release in February. We’ve been following Leopard’s development closely, and we have a working version of SuperDuper! nearly ready. Given the nature of SuperDuper!, though, we don’t want to release it until we have the final “bits” of Leopard to test with. It should be available shortly after Leopard’s release (earlier if we get the final build before the public does—which we won’t).

To answer the inevitable question: the update will be free when released.

I still recommend it as a backup tool because that clone you make with it while you’re still in Tiger is an effective copy of Tiger and is bootable for a quick exit (should something go wrong). You just won’t be able to use it to make a backup of your Leopard installation once you’re done. He goes on to describe why Time Machine doesn’t scare him (specifically that Time Machine is far better suited for quick restoration of specific files and not from a complete system meltdown).

Anyway, regardless of the warning, you can and should use it to backup your data. For those that prefer the other cloning utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, it’s been updated to 3.0.1.


6 Comments

fletcher Author Profile Page said:

All software developers face this same conundrum. There can be minor differences in the shipping version of the software from the final seed even if ostensibly they are the same build. The only way to ensure compatibility is to test against the retail version of the operating system.

I use SuperDuper! to create a bootable clone of my machine and to transition data from drive to drive when necessary. I don't think TimeMachine will actually supplant either of these uses.

October 24, 2007 9:02 AM
PT said:

I think many applications will not yet be Leopard compatible. Hopefully the Oct 26 folks will let us know.

October 24, 2007 10:14 AM
krye said:

Time Machine.Time Machine.Time Machine.

October 24, 2007 10:28 AM
Inkling Author Profile Page said:

Actually, for many of us, SuperDuper! does a better backup than Time Machine. It gets us back to precisely where we were a day or two before without hassling with dozens of temporary versions of work being done. And it works to near perfection with the key reason we do backups--the possibility of a hard drive crash. In that sort of situation, we don't just need copies of documents, we need a bootable drive.

I recently had a hard drive die, and SuperDuper! saved me from a world of hurt. When I saw my hard drive was in trouble, I quickly backed up to a flash drive the only thing of importance than had changed since my last SD backup--a book in InDesign. Then I booted off my external drive, copied that one ID file on to it and was back at work in a matter of minutes with nothing lost.

It would be great if SuperDuper! and Time Machine worked in concert. Time Machine would do incremental backups to a small drive or flash drive until a SD backup is run and then start over.

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

October 24, 2007 11:01 AM
Dan Frakes Author Profile Page said:

As I commented on Aaron's post yesterday, I'll be using Time Machine and SuperDuper together (once the latter is updated). Time Machine should be especially useful for incremental backups of personal data. SuperDuper gives you a complete, bootable "snapshot" of your drive that lets you get up and running in a matter of minutes should disaster strike.

On a related note, we just posted our review of Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0.1 over on Macworld proper:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2007/10/ccc3/index.php


October 24, 2007 12:28 PM
MacBookOwner said:

I love SuperDuper, and was happy to buy the licensed version to have scheduled backups-its worked great.

But I wonder about Time Machine-from what I'm reading, you can in fact use a Time Machine drive to boot from, and restore an entire drive if something drastic happens. So it will have both temporal recovery and full drive recovery. Unless I'm missing something?

October 24, 2007 12:45 PM

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