Western Digital My Book drives and SuperDuper

OK, I have been a long time user of CCC. After 2 HD crashes in the last 18 months I decided that I would rather use an external HD than a second internal HD for backups. Therefore, I bought the WD My Book Pro (3 interfaces including FW800).

My problem is that this drive goes to sleep if not accessed regularly. CCC will not wake it up to perform a scheduled backup. After reading about other backup utilities, I found Superduper. I downloaded it and really like the interface and abilities. However, it seems I must pay for it before I can schedule a backup. I don't mind paying for the software but I'd rather not buy it to find out it will not wake up an external drive either.

Will superduper wake up an external drive when a backup is scheduled? My internal drive is set to never sleep. Looking forward to a response - I really need to start getting backups again!

[d-v-c]

I've got one I'm going to try -- so I may, in the next 10 days, be able to let you know.

As I understand, with an Intel Mac, the two 250MB drives can't be a joined into a RAID. Each is seen as individual drive. Correct?

This is fine with me as I want to format each drive as HFS+.

HERE'S MY QUESTIONS

After saving from a Mac using SD -- if I want to be able to boot from the saved OS -- what determines if a boot can be performed?

1) Does the MyBook have the correct FireWire chipset?

2) If I partition a drive into 2 or 3 "sub-partitions" can each sub-partition be bootable OR can there only be ONE bootable partition per drive?

3) If I partitioned one of the drives into 2 "sub-partitions" can 1 partition be bootable and the other be for data only?

[dnanian]

I don't understand how the drive could go to sleep in a way that wouldn't let it "wake" -- that's really a function of the OS, and not the application... we don't really have a way to "wake" the drive!

Originally Posted by dnanian

I don't understand how the drive could go to sleep in a way that wouldn't let it "wake" -- that's really a function of the OS, and not the application... we don't really have a way to "wake" the drive!

So in essence, you're saying that the drive should automatically 'wake' when the backup starts?

I just opened SuperDuper and got a message stating that it could not find the target drive and to mount it. But the drive does show up in the dropdown list. The drive also appears on my desktop so it really is 'mounted'.

Is there anything I can do to get this to work?
Running a PPC G5 with OS 10.4.10

[dnanian]

If it says it can't find the target, it's because the target's low-level id (UUID/GUID) has changed. Reselect it in the pop-up, quit and restart and it should restore as expected.

So, I need to select the target, quit SuperDuper, Restart the Mac and everything should be OK from then on?

The external drive has never disappeared from my desktop so how can the low-level id (UUID/GUID) change?

Will SuperDuper perform a scheduled backup since I am having this problem? Any resolutions? Can I use a script in the before copy of the advanced tab to 'mount' the drive? I really need to be sure this app will work before purchasing.

[dnanian]

Simply erasing the drive outside of SD! will change its low-level ID. So, yes, if you do that (and just restart SD!, not the Mac), it should be fine; give that a try.

"This problem" -- namely the UUID change -- shouldn't happen at all unless you erase/change the drive at a low-level outside of SD! itself. (We preserve the UUID if you do an erase-then-copy inside of SD itself.)

You haven't yet talked about a drive being mounted/unmounted. Are you trying to unmount the drive?

[hadleyhope]

I have today brought a WD My Book Premium (dual interface). I have just evaluated SD, whilst I was busy ready about "my first backup" the drive powered down. When I finally got round to pressing the copy button the drive powered up again and the backup proceeded.

After the clone I successfully booted from the My Book drive, so add me to using the WD My Book without any problems.

I was so impressed I have now registered SD!

[dnanian]

Thanks, hadleyhope!

Originally Posted by hadleyhope

When I finally got round to pressing the copy button the drive powered up again and the backup proceeded.

Yes, but did the scheduled backup run? i.e. did it wake the drive and successfully perform a backup?

I'm going to try to run a backup again today and see if SD remembers the drive exists when I open it afterwards.

[hadleyhope]

Sorry for the delay, I just wanted to make sure a couple of scheduled backups had run.

SuperDuper woke up the My Book drive just fine, I had set the energy perfs to wake the machine 15 minutes before SuperDuper was due to run so that any open apps had settled down, i.e. Mail and news reader had finished a refresh.

The only niggle I have is that it is not simple to see that the scheduled operation is successfull (though there is a quick Growl notification). The log only details interactive operations.

Martin

[chris_johnsen]

In the Growl preference pane, you should be able to configure messages from SD to be "sticky", so that they do not automatically disappear.

Thanks for everyone's reply. I'll purchase it this week and get the scheduled backups started this week.

[hadleyhope]

Originally Posted by chris_johnsen

In the Growl preference pane, you should be able to configure messages from SD to be "sticky", so that they do not automatically disappear.

OK, I did not know that Growl did sticky messages per application/message category. It is a bit confusing though to open SD, view the log and not see details about the last "operation" (if that operation is scheduled).

Originally Posted by chris_johnsen

In the Growl preference pane, you should be able to configure messages from SD to be "sticky", so that they do not automatically disappear.

OK where is the Growl preference pane?