SuperDuper-Time Machine Confusion

[ramonekalsaw]

(Note: I posted this in the SuperDuper forum also because it's a somewhat URGENT issue for me.)

Hello,

I've stumbled into a backup jam and need some help straightening things out.

All was well SuperDuper-wise until I upgraded to to SnowLeopard, which gave me the TimeMachine option. TM was so easy to use: I just set up a TM backup folder on my external and thought I was in backup heaven. But TM machine has eaten up all the space on my 1TB external, and now after manually deleting old TM files to make more room, the folks on the Apple discussion board imply that I may have/probably corrupted my TM backups; and I'm also hearing that TM is not 'really' a backup solution one can rely on. So now I'm quite vulnerable, backup-wise, and am hoping for some guidance on how to recover.

Can you point me to the steps I need to take to get SuperDuper running again as my primary backup solution?

Is it as simple as setting the 'copy' and 'to' dropdowns on the SuperDuper interface? And if so, should I simply delete the TM backup folder from my backup drive to make room for the SuperDuper backup?

And finally, is there any reason to use TimeMachine in the backup workflow when using SuperDuper?

Thanks for helping me get straightened out!

Ramone

[dnanian]

As I said in my email, please don't post both here and in email. I just end up having to reply two times, which wastes my bandwidth - something that is limited and, frankly, strained.

Also, remember: everyone's issue is urgent to them—I'm sure everyone reading this forum post would agree.

Anyway. Just use SuperDuper! to do an erase-then-copy backup from your source to your destination to start with. That'll delete the Time Machine backups, and then you can use Smart Update moving forward.

You can use TM if you want (see the "Time's Arrow" blog posts), but if you want to use a separate partition or drive.

[ramonekalsaw]

Just use SuperDuper! to do an erase-then-copy backup from your source to your destination to start with. That'll delete the Time Machine backups, and then you can use Smart Update moving forward.


Dave, I'm getting ready to do my SuperDuper backup but the message in the SuperDuper screen says the backup settings I currently have selected will "preserve your Time Machine backups ..."

Can you point out what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks.

[dnanian]

You're not using 'Erase, then copy' as mentioned in my previous message (and your quote of that). Click Options, choose "Erase, then copy" under During copy (rather than Smart Update), and you'll see the text will indicate the Time Machine backups will be erased.