New User Help/Question

[ltf3]

Hi All

I've used Super Duper a few times now with success to do a complete backup of my numerous systems/packages and it works great.

I decided to use a large partitioned drive to hold several backups and sized the partitions to the approximate sizes I thought I needed.

Each backup is a system and most of the apps, but lots of temporary files and unneeded data is left behind via a custom script.

Therefore it is hard to judge exactly what size the backup will be before I do it, thus picking a destination size gets tricky since (and here is my question) Super Duper does not seem to check the size of the defined backup against the desination volume before the copying begins.

Can it do this? I've done a couple of backups that failed because the destination volume was a few gig too small.

Thanks for any thoughts about this

Lee

[dnanian]

Of course, we "could", but only be simulating the entire backup... which would take nearly as long as the backup itself.

One way to "test" out your backup sizes is to use a sparse image. See how much data is really copied. Then, you'll be able to size your partitions appropriately.

But don't make it too close. Slack space is important in some situations -- we don't make a delete pass before a copy pass, which means there can be situations where there's not enough space to smart update a partition if you don't have any free space.

Note also that programs like iPartition will allow you to resize your partitions "on the fly"... this could be useful as you attempt to optimize the partition sizes.

Hope that helps...