Multiple back-ups - how to

[JaneDoe]

I would like to store several complete back-ups on my external drive -- daily, once a week and once a month. However, I can't find a way in SuperDuper to name a back-up (for example, Daily, Week, Month) ... so right now it looks to me as though, if I schedule a second (unnamed) backup to copy once a week, it will just copy over the original daily backup file rather than creating a new one. Does anyone know how to create several, separate, distinct complete back-up files on an external drive?

[dnanian]

Sure. Partition the destination drive into three partitions -- one for the daily, one for the weekly and one for the monthly. Then, schedule as appropriate.

[JaneDoe]

To me, creating several partitions in the external drive seems like an extreme step. Why is this necessary? Other backup software I have used allowed me to just give each backup design a different name

[dnanian]

Why are partitions extreme? There's nothing especially radical about them.

The other way to do it is to store three disk images side by side. But partitioning is better, and is the way I strongly suggest doing it.

[davep]

Dave -- Please explain why it's better to use partitions rather than disk images. Your responses in this forum are always FAST, which is very much appreciated. Sometimes just a bit more information about the WHY is very helpful. Thanks!

[dnanian]

Well, I go into detail in the User's Guide. But there are three main reasons.

First, you can't start up from a disk image, but you can from a partition.

Second, disk images are "removed" one level from the actual disk. So, you have one whole additional layer where problems can occur.

Finally, if a problem does occur that makes the image un-openable, you can't recover any files from the image, rather than losing just the damaged files.