Newbie Questions...

[SBlumenthal]

Hi, I am currently using Backup 3, and considering a switch over to SuperDuper for a variety of reasons.

But there are some functions in BU3 that I like, and wonder if/how they translate in SuperDooper.

Backup 3 does not allow for the backing up of applications. This may be a good thing (as I understand applications are best when installed through their native installer programs). However BU3 does allow me to back-up my settings for applications like Mail and Safari as well as preferences for other applications.

From what I understand SuperDuper saves your whole hard drive (applications included). If you reboot your drive from a SuperDuper backup you copy over everything including your applications (rather than re-installing them). Will this impact certain applications like Mail and Address Book? Is there a recommended procedure for this?

Thanks,
Steven

[dnanian]

We don't have to save your entire hard drive if you don't want to, Steven. You can choose to only save your "User Files" -- basically, your Home folder. But, it's best to do the full disk backup.

If you do a full restore from a backup, all your files, including Mail and your Address book, come right back, as they were at the time of the backup. That's the great part about a full copy: even if your drive fails, you can start up from the backup and keep working as if nothing had happened.

Does that help?

[SBlumenthal]

Yes, full back-up is definitely the way I would want to go. Was just a bit nervous because BU3 made such an issue over the settings.

[dnanian]

Understood. I think they've really overcomplicated things for most people in that. They need to limit the data they copy because they're focused on sending the backup to .Mac, which is of limited size.

We, on the other hand, focus on full, bootable backups -- and with disk space so cheap these days, it's truly practical to have a full, updated copy.

[SBlumenthal]

Sounds good. One last thing. I read this in the User Guide and was wondering if you could explain it a bit more (like to a 4-year-old). Does it mean using 2 drives and alternating between them?

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Rotate more than one full backup. Any need for this kind of “temporal rollback” can be significantly reduced with a single rotation – say, on a weekly basis – and nearly eliminated with two, a weekly and a monthly. It’s incredibly rare that, on a non-archival basis, you’d need to go back more than four weeks.

[dnanian]

Either two drives or two partitions on one drive. Every other week you'd switch backup destinations.