newbie questions
 

Hi,
I'm a new registered user of SuperDuper! and have a few questions:

1) Is there a way to force the execution of a scheduled backup immediately? What I'm really looking for is a way to save a backup configuration (source, destination and script settings), i.e. give it a name so that I can both schedule it or run it in an ad hoc manner. Does that make sense?

2) What does it mean to specify a disk image as a source in the "Copy"
menu? I've tried selecting "Disk Image.." from the "Copy" menu but
when I try to navigate to the disk image I want to use (a .sparseimage)
it is grey'd out

Thanks,
Bruce

Hi, Bruce. Welcome, and let's see if I can answer your questions:

1. There's no (convenient) way to force the execution of a scheduled backup, although you can load the settings with File > Load Settings... (they're in Library/Application Support/SuperDuper!/Scheduled Copies) and run them once loaded. Note you can also save some settings (Cmd-s) and then load, run or schedule them, no problem. Note that when you schedule the settings we copy them to the folder mentioned above, so changes made to your existing settings will not be reflected in the scheduled copy.

2. Since it's a "Save" panel, files are greyed out. But they can still be picked, and we'll fill in the box above. A sparse image, if selected, will be opened and updated during the backup.

Hope that helps.

Hmm.. I'm still confused..
 

Thanks for the info.. I completely missed the "Load Settings" capability however I'm still a little confused.

As a test, I just specified a source, destination and script. I selected "Save As..", gave it a name "HomeBackup" and hit "Save".

I then changed the script used and invoked "Load Settings..." to load "HomeBackup" However, the script specified in the "using" menu did not revert to the one I specified when I saved the settings.

Also, no matter what I do I can not select the greyed .sparseimage file when I specify "Disk Image.." as a source for backup in the "Copy" menu. I click on the grey .sparseimage file and the "Open" button on the dialog is still grey. I've tried this with a couple of disk images but no luck.

(I've seen the behavior you're describing when I select a .sparseimage as the destination for a backup in the "to" menu and am able to select a greyed .sparseimage in that dialog. I just can't seem to do it when I
try to specify a sparse disk image as the source for a backup through the "Copy" menu. Is there a difference between the "Open" dialog you get when you select "Disk Image.. " in the "Copy" menu and the "Save" dialog
you described that you get when you select "Disk Image.." in the "to" menu?)

(FWIW, I'm running v2.1.1 (v78) on a MacBook Pro)

Thanks,
Bruce

I think that, since you re-loaded the same settings, it didn't really do anything, Bruce. Try quitting*(or loading different settings), then change the script and load the settings.

I know it's confusing, but you can't use a sparse image as the source for a backup: only read-only images can be used as "direct" choices for the source (that's because a disk-image restore uses ASR, which doesn't accept sparse images).

Instead, open the sparse image and use the volume that appears instead.

Now I'm tracking..
 

Ok, now I'm tracking.. I see the settings loading after quitting.

WRT backing up from a .sparseimage.. the sparseimage file I was
thinking of using is formatted as a "Unix File System" rather than
HFS+ (since I needed it to preserve case in the filenames) So
I mounted the .sparseimage but it didn't show up as a choice
in the "Copy" menu. I assume its because of the Unix File
System on the sparseimage since a different (HFS+) sparseimage file
mounted *does* show up there. Is that a correct assesment?

Thanks,
Bruce

That's correct: we only copy from HFS+ volumes. Of course, you could use case-sensitive HFS+ to preserve case...