Can someone give me a hand??

[stevertr]

My Super Duper seems to be hanging up.

It was working fine the other day. Today I got a new external and am going to be using it as a backup.

When I do "copy all files," it continuously hangs up at 3144 files. I've tried different drives etc.. same result.

I then tried "Backup User files" and that works fine, copying all 1M+ files, 90Mb.

Tried to fool it by then going to Copy all Files, and using SmartBackup to see if it would just fill in the blanks. No luck. Still hangs up around the 4000 file mark.

Last question.... if you use "backup user files" does that mean that it's not "bootable" because it doesn't contain the applications and things.

Any help most welcome.

Regards

Steve

[chris_johnsen]

My Super Duper seems to be hanging up.

It was working fine the other day. Today I got a new external and am going to be using it as a backup.

When I do "copy all files," it continuously hangs up at 3144 files. I've tried different drives etc.. same result.

I then tried "Backup User files" and that works fine, copying all 1M+ files, 90Mb.

Tried to fool it by then going to Copy all Files, and using SmartBackup to see if it would just fill in the blanks. No luck. Still hangs up around the 4000 file mark.

Are you sure it is really hanging? While SuperDuper! is copying a very large file there are no status updates (except for elapsed time?).

Although Smart Update would skip such a large file on subsequent backups to that same volume (if the version on the source was unchanged from the version on the destination), for the first backup to a volume (an empty volume, or one that used to have unrelated or non-backup data), it must copy all the files, including very large ones that might make it look like SuperDuper! was “hung”. If the additional “different drives” you tested were also blank (or at least not most recently used as a backup of the source drive), then SuperDuper! would also have to copy such a very large file to them as well (and thus appear to hang on any drive that did not already have an up to date copy of the very large file already on it—your normal backup drive would probably already have this file, so Smart Update could skip it, but any new drive would not have it, so it would suffer the long copy).

If you are comfortable with the command line, you might try lsof on SDCopy to see what it has open at the time of the “hang”. If you do not have a clue what I suggested, just try giving SuperDuper! some more time to work.

It could be that some file or folder is corrupt, but in that case SuperDuper! will usually report an error and abort the copy.

Last question.... if you use "backup user files" does that mean that it's not "bootable" because it doesn't contain the applications and things.

While having applications is a crucial to having a fully functional system, the real reason is a bit deeper. A slightly better way of looking at it is that the “user files” copy script does not copy the OS itself. If there is no OS on a volume, it can not possibly be bootable.

[stevertr]

Thanks so much. So I let it run over night, and it finally finished, with an elapsed time of the same 3.5 hours as before...so perhaps you're right, it was just hitting a larger file.

Thanks for answering the backup user files question as well. So in short, that will never be bootable, even thought he bottom of the SD panel says "making disc bootable" so I just wont use that anymore.

I now need to make a choice between the two different ways that SD seems to copy all files.

The first way, I leave the box unchecked that says "create disc image" and as a result, my backup drive looks like a simple finder panel with all my files easily visible.

The other way I tried it is by checking the box, and then my external drive seems to have only the sparse image file (no clue what that is) which I can't click on and view files.

Is there an advantage or disadvantage to doing it one way or the other? Are both bootable?

Regards

Steve

[dnanian]

Steve, you need to take a little time to review the documentation (Help > User's Guide). The options are discussed in full there, as are things like "Backup - user files", "Backup - all files", Smart Update, etc. I think you'll find it well worth your time to browse through.