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View Full Version : A few matters for which I am in need of advice


jongleurjon
10-28-2007, 09:52 PM
Just bought SuperDuper! today along with a Western Digital MyBook from Amazon.

I plan to schedule daily backups at 3.00AM. I plan to be asleep when this happens and so I won’t be there to quit all the apps. I don’t want to have to quit any apps, anyway. Is this a necessary step? How safe is it to leave everything running during a backup?

Should I create two partitions on the hard drive; one for my bootable backup and a tiny one for other, miscellaneous, temporary uses? Are there any disadvantages to having multiple partitions? Does it make it harder to boot from?

In the Preferences I have Prompt before overwriting data checked, as it is by default. Will I need to uncheck this to allow my iBook to back itself up without any human intervention?

How reliable are SuperDuper! backups? Have there been incidences of backups not being bootable? Are there any checks that can be performed automatically to check the backup’s integrity?

Does SuperDuper! backup swap files, temporary files, caches etc., or will I need to manually exclude this sort of stuff?

Sorry for all the questions. I just really want to get a good, solid backup system going.

Jon.

dnanian
10-28-2007, 11:15 PM
Depends on the apps. You wouldn't want to leave Entourage, Fusion, Parallels, that kind of thing running.

Yes, multiple partitions, no disadvantages.

No, you won't need to uncheck the "Prompt" option.

SD! backups are quite reliable. But we can only be as reliable as the environment, hardware, etc. There aren't really checks you can do other than to occasionally try to boot from them, and pay attention if there are errors.

We automatically exclude the things that should be excluded.

I strongly suggest reading the User's Guide! :)

jongleurjon
10-29-2007, 02:42 PM
Thanks so much for the info.

I did read the user guide, but by the end of it I still had a few questions/clarifications.

I pretty-much always have Safari, Mail, Address Book, iCal, iChat, Skype, iTunes, and NetNewsWire open. Often apps such as Photoshop, Pages and TextEdit will be open too. I will schedule my iBook to wake five minutes prior to the backup to ensure that NetNewsWire, iChat and Mail have done their things.

Mail checks for email every minute. Could this potentially cause problems?

What about if I wanted to leave something downloading overnight? That would be bad, right?

Thanks again,
Jon.

dnanian
10-29-2007, 02:47 PM
Actually, set it to wake ONE minute before your copy time.

Those apps should generally be fine (except maybe if iTunes is downloading). Mail should be OK.

If you do have a problem, you'll get an error...

jongleurjon
10-29-2007, 08:17 PM
Okay...

Thank you for all your help and quick responses.