Backup home directory into drive backuped using "Backup - all files"

[jjohnsson]

I have searched for an answer to this, but haven't found any. Please tell me how to do this.

I run "Backup -all files" about weekly. Syncing the contents of my main hard drive (~70 GB, ~600 000 files) to my external drive takes about 40 minutes. My guess is that most of this time is syncing system files and such.

So I would like an option to just sync my home folder, so I can do that quickly, on a daily basis if I want to. My wish is to sync it *into* the same backup partition as used in "Backup - all files". (The files would then need to go into /Volumes/Backup/Users/username/, not /Volumes/Backup/, as I think Superduper wanted to do last I tried.) I know this could make things inconsistent, but I don't think thats a big issue.

Is this possible to do in Superduper? Can you tell me how to do it?


Also, thanks for this nice backup utility that does its thing well!

[dnanian]

No, you can't do that... but it won't help. System files aren't really changing. If it's taking 40 minutes, it's likely that you changed a lot of information... or you're using FileVault/Parallels/VirtualPC/Something that deals with very large files...

[jjohnsson]

Originally Posted by dnanian

No, you can't do that... but it won't help. System files aren't really changing. If it's taking 40 minutes, it's likely that you changed a lot of information... or you're using FileVault/Parallels/VirtualPC/Something that deals with very large files...

Wow, that was fast! Thanks!

Ok, sad to hear I can't do what I wanted.

I can't think of any app I run that changes lots of information, or is disk intensive. I don't run any app of those you mention.

I don't think it's file copying that takes the most time, but checking through lots of files that don't need copying. (As it takes about the same time to backup all files if nothing changed on disk.) Since, as you say, system files don't change often, I would have wanted not to let Superduper sync those files.

Is there any way to see where on the drive that Superduper spends most of its time? That is, what parts of the directory structure.

If you think the time it takes to backup my drive seems too long, I'd like to hear if you have any suggestions to make it go faster. I know my main drive is quite slow to begin with.

[dnanian]

Well, on my system I routinely check over 1.5 million files and folder in about 12 minutes. Even when you exclude files, we scan the drive.

It's very unusual for it to take 40 minutes, though, if nothing has changed. If you look at the bottom of the log for one of these runs, how many files does it say were actually copied, and how much data?

[jjohnsson]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Well, on my system I routinely check over 1.5 million files and folder in about 12 minutes. Even when you exclude files, we scan the drive.

It's very unusual for it to take 40 minutes, though, if nothing has changed. If you look at the bottom of the log for one of these runs, how many files does it say were actually copied, and how much data?

I just ran "Backup - all files" (the smart version):
628 517 files evaluated, 7 833 files copied. Effective copy speed 34,53 MB/s.

I have an iMac G4 800 MHz, and copy from the internal drive (don't remember its rpm) to an external firewire 400 drive. Both the internal drive and the backup partition is quite low on space (~1 GB empty). Could this be the reason Superduper now runs about 10 minutes slower than it did when I first got the program?

Edit: this backup took 34:08 to finish.

[jjohnsson]

Sorry, I now see I didn't really answer your questions. At least not the amount of data copied. However, the log in ~/Library/Logs/SuperDuper!.log doesn't contain any runs from this year, just from 2005. Is there some other log that is used instead?

IIRC, the amount of data copied was in the ~400 MB range. But that info disappeared from the main window of Superduper when it finished.