Superduper 2.5

SuperDuper is quickly became everyone’s favorite backup utility. I’ve been using it on a regular basis for the last couple months, and now it is my must have application.

Most remarkable feature of SuperDuper is the being user friendly that is evident throughout the app something that is required for a backup application. Backing up data is one of the tasks that you have to do, but at the mean time, would not want to mess up with your data. And SuperDuper promising to make backing up for no-brainier.

Main window is quite minimal while it hides quite a bit of tweaking that is available behind the sight.The target for the backup could be an internal or external hard drive, a network location, or a disk image.

Backup routine is controlled by a script, a set of directions which can be modified. For instance, I use my own custom script which, among other things, does not bother to backup my movie files. The wordy “What’s going to happen?” informs you exactly the steps and the details that will happen next - handy for people like me who all time want to make sure that they are not overwriting or erasing vital files. Using Options, you can identify what kind of backup you want - a full wipe out and copy, to copy newer files to target, to copy different files, or to do a Smart Update. Smart Update is the choice you are most likely going to use after you have created a first backup and want to do only quick backups after that. This makes the target identical to the source with the least effort required, sort of like “Erase then transfer” but much faster.

For the duration of the real backup process, you are once more told exactly what’s going on - amount of data examined for transfer, how much has been in fact backed up, and the backup rate, which is usually quite extraordinary. After the backup finish, you have an option to let your Mac sleep or shutdown or just quit SuperDuper.

An additional nice feature is to let power users run their own shell scripts before and after a backup. These could by anything useful from deleting your own temp folder before the backup starts, to sending you an email that the backup was done.

The Sandbox is another touch that can prove very helpful. It keeps an identical bootable copy of your main drive’s system files which shares all your other data and apps from the main drive. It can be useful in certain situations, such as when you want to make a key update to your system. You can always boot from your earlier Sandbox, apply the updates there, check if everything is working fine, and then resync the Sandbox to the original system.

SuperDuper comes with a clever scheduler to.

Only thing it can lack is support for incremental backups where you can go back to different versions of the data you have been backing up in the past - something Leopard’s Time Machine is supposed to take care of.

So what is the final decision? SuperDuper performs like a first-class Mac application, gives you clear directions about what will happen at each step, has amazing manual, has lots of options to play with if you want to get your hands dirty, and does the entire job with the slightest involvement.