Can I stop a backup?

[fidosg]

Managed to fill up my partition and mess up the repartition, so here I am having to back-up 110GB to a new 1tb WD Element drive (usb).

So far it has been running for 21:46hrs and backed up only 47GB (.65mb/s).
Unfortunately I have to move my laptop in the morning and with 27 hours of copying left - I'm going to have to stop the backup.

1. Can I do this and cause no harm to the partition on my drive?
2. Will the back-up resume from the stopping point or do I need to start again wait until I can have my laptop plugged into the drive for 48hours?

Thanks
Steve

[chris_johnsen]

I can only provide information from the perspective of another user, but I think I have the correct answers to your questions.

1. Stopping a backup will not harm the target volume in any way.
   1. It may leave the target volume in an inconsistent state with respect to the source, but the target volume itself will not be damaged ([i]SuperDuper![i] works almost entirely at the file level, so unless the OS or the hardware is at fault, SuperDuper! can not really damage a volume itself).
      1. The potential inconsistency comes from the fact that only some of the files will have been copied, so the rest of the files will either be missing (when using "Erase, Then Copy"), or old (when using "Smart Update").
2. If you make a later backup using "Smart Update" (which is, as far as I know, the only meaningful way to 'resume' a backup with SuperDuper!), it will skip any files that are still up to date.
   1. I can not say that it will not take another 48 hours to 'finish' the copy, but if there are no changes to the files that have already been copied, then it should be able to get past those and start copying new files relatively quickly.

[fidosg]

Thanks Chris, I shall give it a go!

[fidosg]

That worked perfectly - in fact I plugged the drive straight into the mac the second time, rather than the USB hub and the speed flew up to 24mb/s.