Anyone using SuperDuper! with a TC?

[Brian M]

So I've got a Time Capsule, am using Time Machine and want to use SuperDuper! with it as well in some fashion.

The ideal situation would be to make a bootable clone of my HD to the TC that lives beside the TM backups (or a USB drive hanging off the TC) , but since it is on the network (over ethernet) I don't imagine that's possible.

Whether or not I can make a bootable clone to the TC (or a USB drive attached to the TC), I want to use SuperDuper! to clone the TC so I can swap out offsite copies of my TM backup.

The problem is SuperDuper! doesn't see the TC at all. I'm wondering if it isn't partitioned incorrectly (I'm on an Intel Mac so it needs to be GUID correct?). There doesn't seem to be a way to format the TC at all that I can find, and I'm not sure how to tell how it is partitioned. I'd be fine using the command line to partition it correctly if someone could point me in the right direction.

Thanks for any help!

[dnanian]

You can't make a directly bootable clone over the network. See "Backing up over a network" in the User's Guide, and the "Airport Disks" post at the blog.

[Brian M]

That's fine.

I should be able to see the TC in SuperDuper! though shouldn't I? Does that mean it's partitioned incorrectly? How can I fix that (I'm fine with erasing to do it).

Thanks for your help.

[Brian M]

Actually - what I would like to do is to attach a USB disk to my machine, and use SuperSuper! to clone the TC to that external attached to my machine.

Is that possible?

[dnanian]

No, we can't do that -- we can't copy FROM a network drive.

[Brian M]

Bummer. Thanks anyway.

[theloon]

After much messing about I have worked out how to get SuperDuper to work with Time Capsule. I'm currently backing up using TC as a NAS and the backup is going in the Time Capsule folder.

There is a problem with TC and user accounts. If you have more than one Mac then you can't connect using the same username/password to the TC with more than one session at a time.

It only seems to work if you do the following.

Time Capsule Settings....

Open Airport - Click on your Time Capsule
Use the Manual Setup
Click on Disks then File Sharing

Enable Files Sharing
Secure Shared Disks - change to "With accounts"

Configure Account - add a user account for yourself and other TC users.

Airport Disks Guest Access - "Read and write"

Press Update to restart and load new config into TC.

Mac Settings

Option 1

Setup the Time Machine, which will ask you for your username and password for the TC, this will allow you direct access to both the User disk directory and the "Time Capsule". These will show in Finder when you connect with SuperDuper

Or

Option 2
You can connect to TC using the Finder, this will also setup the username/password in the Keychain.

From Finder click on Go - Connect to Server (Apple-K)
enter the Server IP using the following smb://x.x.x.x where x is your TC IP address
Press + and then press Connect
It should now ask for username and password, save these in your Keychain

SuperDuper Settings.

Start SuperDuper select your Copy source and then select "to" option. From here you can select either the TC or your Server from the Finder - depending on which connection you have.

I have tested this on all my Mac's and it works. If I have got anything in the proceedure wrong please let me know.

You can also use the TC on Windows machines, you need Airport for Windows installed and to have entered the username/password for your account using the taskbar app it installs.

Hope this helps.

[petvas]

I am currently using my Time Capsule with Superduper and it works. The question is, how do we restore from the image file? If I start with the Mac OS Disc, will it see the network volume?

[dnanian]

It won't, no. This is one of the reasons I don't generally recommend a network backup as your only backup.

You'll need to either use another Mac as the "controlling computer" and connect both the Mac you want to restore to, and the Time Capsule, or use a small drive with a basic OSX installation on it to connect to your network and restore (with SD! or Disk Utility).