Frequently asked questions

SuperDuper Classic is our long-serving edition of SuperDuper!—the version many people have trusted for years. It runs on a wide range of older macOS versions, so older Macs are never left behind.

Versions of Classic are compatible all the way back to macOS Jaguar (version 10.2) and forward through Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia. It’s Apple silicon native and produces fully bootable HFS+ and APFS backups.

Users of Sequoia (macOS 14) and later should use the new SuperDuper 4 instead.

If your Mac runs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, we recommend SuperDuper! 4 — it’s a tip-to-tail rewrite that does everything Classic does, and a whole lot more. Choose Classic if you’re on macOS 13 or earlier.

SuperDuper Classic will not receive further updates, save for any critical security issues that might arise.

Classic includes Smart Update, Smart Delete (banishes “disk full” errors with no speed penalty), Smart Wake (ensures backups happen whether your Mac is awake or asleep), flexible scheduling, snapshot support, AppleScript support, Dark Mode, and an extensive task-based User’s Guide.

Yes. Classic can copy your HFS+ Time Machine history to another disk, so you can back it up or move to a larger drive without losing your history, as can SuperDuper 4.

However, you cannot copy an HFS+ Time Machine volume to APFS: APFS does not support the features needed (specifically, directory hard links). In addition, APFS Time Machine volumes cannot be copied at all: Apple uses features that cannot currently be copied by 3rd parties (or even Apple’s own asr replicator).

Yes—try Classic free on as many Macs as you like: it can make full, Erase, then copy backups, does not expire, and comes with support. Registration unlocks additional features like Smart Update and Scheduling.

Note: Apple has produced an article that goes into detail about how to do this with recent macOS versions. This article explains how to erase an internal drive:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

And this explains how to generally format an external:

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/erase-and-reformat-a-storage-device-dskutl14079/mac

A lot of people have been confused about how to format their backup drive as APFS (YES, you can format regular HDDs as APFS), and are confused about how to get an HFS+ volume on the same drive as an APFS volume.

The “new” Disk Utility has some nice features, but they’ve buried a bunch of stuff in the UI. Here’s how to do both.

Format the Whole Drive as APFS

• Open Disk Utility
• Choose Show All Devices from the View menu
• Select the destination drive hardware (below the External label and above the existing volume)
• Click Erase
• Choose the GUID partition scheme (2nd pop-up), then APFS formatting (1st pop-up) and name appropriately
• Click Erase

Add an APFS partition to an existing drive

• Select the external drive in the sidebar
• Click the Partition toolbar button
• Click the + button below the partition diagram
• Size the volume as needed
• Choose the APFS format
• Click Apply

Add a new APFS volume to an existing APFS container

• Select an existing APFS volume in the sidebar that’s in the container you want to add a volume to
• Click + in the toolbar
• Select the options you want, including minimum and quota sizes if desired
• Click Add

For older OS versions (pre-10.11), the following should help beyond what Apple has provided.

It’s very important to properly initialize a drive if you want to be able to use it as a startup drive - whether it’s a new backup drive or a new internal drive.

Most drives come set up for Windows, and while they’ll generally work with the Mac, they won’t work properly as startup drives.

A “partition scheme” is the low-level on-drive stricture that is used by the OS to find the “volumes” (the “drives” that appear in Finder*a physical disk can have one or more) on a physical disk. There are three different “partition schemes” that can be used on the Mac:

• Master Boot Record This is the partitioning scheme used by Windows, and how most drives are shipped.
• Apple Partition Map The original partitioning scheme used by the Mac, required for Power PC based Macs.
• GUID (aka GPT) The new partitioning scheme used by Intel and Apple silicon Macs.

So, here’s what you should do with a new drive.

• Start Disk Utility (it’s in /Applications/Utilities)

• Select the external drive hardware in the sidebar.

  You must select the drive hardware, above any existing volumes, or the Partition tab will not appear.

• Click the Partition tab

• Use Disk Utility’s controls to divide the drive as needed, even as a single large partition. Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format type and name appropriately
• Click the Options button
• Choose the proper partition scheme (GUID for Intel macs, Apple Partition Map for Power PC) and accept the page
• Click Partition.

Email support@shirt-pocket.com. We support Classic customers just as carefully as everyone else.