What can I do during a backup?

[jcorban]

Hi Dave,

Can I just continue working - editing files, reading mail, web browsing - during a backup? I've had problems with frozen and failed backups that I'm pretty sure were due to a bad drive (since replaced), but I'm still wary about doing stuff during a backup.

And if I edit files during a backup, will SuperDuper always pick up the latest version?

Thanks,
Jim

[dnanian]

In general, you can work "lightly" on your Mac while you're backing up, but you shouldn't do a lot of writing to the drive, and definitely don't do things like download files. If you do, you'll likely run into problems if we are backing up the file that's being written at the exact moment we're backing up (see the Troubleshooting section of the User's Guide).

And, no -- we won't pick up the latest version unless it was written at the time we copy the file -- we don't "back up" and re-copy, because files are constantly changing... trying to get everything "current" would be pretty futile.

Hope that makes sense & helps, Jim.

[tonymontanawc]

Yeah I would avoid it. It's probably better to run it at night when you're not doing anything.