Backup on Connect?

[gobo]

Hi,

Not sure if it's useful to talk about a feature that I haven't even seen yet, but I am very curious to learn how you handle it.

How does the Automatic Backup on Connect feature work?
More precisely: how do you prevent it starting a backup when you're actually connecting your drive to restore something?

[dnanian]

Just cancel the automatic run when presented.

[gobo]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Just cancel the automatic run when presented.

If it auto-starts, isn't there some chance that the data you want gets overwritten while you're trying to cancel? Or even worse, screw up your backup image?

I can understand why it is convenient to have automatic run. But you do have to realise the risk you're taking at that point.

[dnanian]

There's only so much I can do about that kind of thing, though. There's a delay, you can turn if off before you attach, etc...

[GM80]

One could also shutdown and boot from the backup, recovering whatever they need in that way. I presume it won't attempt to backup onto itself in that scenario?

I just wanted to say a personal thank you for the Backup On Connect and Eject When Finished features, Dave. I'm big on automation and have been running a preference pane (DoSomethingWhen) alongside SuperDuper! for this sole purpose. Who knows whether it will work with Snow Leopard, so I'm glad to leave it behind in favor of your built-in solution. Thanks!

[dnanian]

Let me know what you think of it when you get it.

[maine]

This feature seeems awfully "dangerous" to me. I understand the convenience aspect, but the cost seems awfully high. It just makes it way too easy to accidentally wipe out your backup just when you most need it. Get briefly distracted or any number of things and poof.

User errors have a high likelihood of comming in bunches, perhaps because the user is tired, or perhaps because he is stressed from the first error, or whatever. It just happens a lot; I've seen it (and done it :-()) myself for other backup recovery scenarios with other software. The fingers got so trained to the usual backup command that they did it pretty much on their own when the backup tape was mounted to do a restore. Ouch. The unix tar command is horrible in that regard when used for backups (as has been done); one letter diference between the commands to restore from a backup versus make a backup (destroying the existing one).

I'm not sure what to suggest, particularly now after it is released (I wasn't watching here and didn't notice beforehand). I'd just like to add the caution that, for whatever reason, user error frequency is quite high when recovering from backups (any kind - not specific to SuperDuper), and I think one should be very sensitive to the possibility and to minimizing its likely damage.

I hope that at least there is an option to turn off this feature. Haven't downloaded 2.6 yet to look. I'm guessing that there is. If there isn't such an option, could you pretty-please add one (and maybe it ought to warn about the dangers that come with the convenience).

[dnanian]

So, don't turn it on! It's not on by default, nor is any scheduling. It's an option. Use as required.

[maine]

Ah, good. Thank you.

[matts]

I haven't had the possibility to use this feature yet, but it sounds very promising.

Since I wasn't able to find anything about it in the user guide (am I blind?), I have to ask around: are we exclusivly talking about physical connection, or can mounting a network volume also trigger a backup? (I hope so.)

-matts