CS2 and Superduper....incompatible?

[kswaty]

I booted my source drive and installed CS2 (and activated it), then booted back to Sandbox as usual. When in Sandbox, the CS2 programs in Applications were not visible - so I went to my source volume in Finder and tried to launch from there and could not launch them. In the Read Me files of CS2 it does say that it is activated only for one computer (hard drive). Which evidently means a partition as well. Even if you format the drive you have it installed on, you have to transfer the activation.

So I guess this also means when I backup my source volume to my backup 2nd hard drive, that CS2 will not be usable on it either.....is there some kind of strategy to deal with this?

[dnanian]

This is a problem with program that activate against drives, as opposed to Macs. And there's little we can do to fix it, unfortunately.

My suggestion: complain to Adobe about their overly restrictive and silly activation.

[kswaty]

I will be calling Adobe tomorrow morning. If I go ahead and use Superduper anyway, can you see any other problems other than CS2 will not be usable on Sandbox or 2nd drive backup? And I guess this means that I won't be able to work from Sandox....

Also, in the manual, it says that if you want to copy Sandbox back over the Source, it will only work if Superduper created the Sandbox and the shared files. What exactly are the "shared" files in this situation.

[dnanian]

Well, in your case you didn't update the Sandbox, which is why the CS2 applications weren't availbale -- the activation on the original drive should be retained and work. (It does for me.) So, please boot back to the original drive and update the Sandbox.

But -- a full copy won't keep the activation for obvious reasons: if it did, then it would be much of an activation!

The shared files are your shared applications and user files (depending on the script you used).

[kswaty]

So are you saying that if I update my Sandbox from the source, that I might be able to use CS2 from the Sandbox? This situation seems impossible, because if I ever need to copy my Backup to my Source, then I'll be copying an unusable copy of CS2...or will the copy retain the activation when its put back on the Source...?

If I drag and drop some image files from Source to Backup, does that mean that Superduper did not create them?

Thank you soooo much for your help!!!

[dnanian]

OK: a Sandbox is not a backup. So please don't be confused by that.

The restoration problem is a general issue with Activation. They'll allow you to reactivate if you call. It's frustrating, I know, but it's Adobe's issue, and they need to deal with it.

The point of the warning on the Sandbox is that you shouldn't "share" files yourself. Moving them around is fine, but just be aware that the "sharing" should be done by SD, and not manually.