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I'm a long time CCC user on the Mac platform. I'm pretty happy with it as an application to clone my HDD on a fortnightly basis as a backup measure. Recently the price went from $0 to $39.95. That's a not insignificant price hike. Certainly not gouging but a hike none-the-less. I'm willing to pay that money even tho' it's twice what I just paid for a full OS (OSX Mountain Lion) just recently.

So before I take the plunge I'd like to sound out some of the competition, namely SuperDuper!. This is $27.95. Clearly this wins out on price.

SuperDuper! also advertises the fact that it employs Smart Update. As I understand it, this simply means that only what has changed since the last update will be changed in the backup, thus saving a lot of time. SuperDuper! minus this capability is free. The problem is that CCC seems to employ a similar approach too. Yet a 400 GB run will always take around 4 hrs on my HDD set-up using CCC.

Will SuperDuper! be significantly faster? Anyone on here have experience with both? Any other approaches I should look at?

(The data on my HDD are of the 'I really can't lose it' variety.)

Sorry to ask the obvious and probably silly question but why go to the extent of making a full hard drive image for each of your backups? Is Time Machine not adequate?

I love SuperDuper for cloning hard drives when doing an upgrade to a bigger drive. It does that flawlessly. Never used CCC, so can't compare.

And the Smart Update feature in SD has always worked perfectly as well. No complaints.

Norphy wrote:

Sorry to ask the obvious and probably silly question but why go to the extent of making a full hard drive image for each of your backups? Is Time Machine not adequate?

Excellent question. Because I set it going at night, it doesn't bother me too much how long it takes to run. One time I had a HDD failure and it was nice to have a bootable clone on hand to get me started again. For that reason I suppose I've tended to favour CCC over Time Machine and I've sort of put Time Machine out of consideration.

But now I reckon is the time to start using it again.

Many thanks!

Silly question perhaps but can I plug in my Time Machine HDD, say, once every 2 days? Does it work like that? Or does it need to be constantly attached?

I can handle losing a couple of days of data.

It should work that way, yes. Then if your internal HD craps out, you simply install a new one, boot off your OSX install DVD (heh, if you've made one), install the OS, then during initial setup tell it to copy your data back from the Time Machine disk.

pedro wrote:

Silly question perhaps but can I plug in my Time Machine HDD, say, once every 2 days? Does it work like that? Or does it need to be constantly attached?

I can handle losing a couple of days of data.

It does work that way, and it should copy in all the versions as well. I actually would turn off/disconnect the drive while working in certain disk-intensive programs and then turn it back on, and occasionally I'd turn it off and forget to turn it back on. FSEvents does a good job of watching changes and getting the changes on the backup.

Thank you chaps.

Interestingly, I just noticed that CCC 3.4.7 is still available for download (the new paid version is 3.5.1). There's a disclaimer that 3.4.7 isn't 'validated' for use with SL, Lion, or ML. But I reckon that's the version I've been using with no problems on Lion systems. I think SL, Lion and ML all use the same rsync version anyway so perhaps I'll be safe using this older CCC with ML?

Man, I've read up on Time Machine again and it's just not suited to my needs. Perhaps I have to spend the dosh on CCC after all. But ~$40 is huge for a single application these days...

What makes Time Machine unsuitable for you?

pedro wrote:

$40 is huge for a single application these days...

Hardly. You"re being super cheap. Developers need to earn something for their hard work.

What's your data worth to you? $40?

And I'd also like to see what's wrong with Time Machine per your needs, given that it does differential data backups without compelling you to image the entire drive like your proposed solution.

Fight? dd wins no contest.

What makes Time Machine unsuitable for you?

Well, I'm not sure it is. But I think it is because it can't make a bootable backup. That's not hugely important but it's a great feature. I also like the idea of having a single copy of everything, not many different versions. I also tend to plug in CCC every 2 weeks, not have it running constantly.

Hardly. You're being super cheap. Developers need to earn something for their hard work.

They do and I often donate or buy to help them out. Three days ago I spent $194 on an upgrade to some music production software that I've already sunk 100s of dollars into in the past. There's some sort of psychological difference to me b/w that kind of software and a 'rsync gui' that used to be free, whose competition is $27, and which Apple bundles their own widely acclaimed version in their $20 OS for free.

For $20 I would have bought it at the drop of a hat. I may still buy it at $40 but now it requires some consideration and the sounding out of the competition.

What's your data worth to you? $40?

And I'd also like to see what's wrong with Time Machine per your needs, given that it does differential data backups without compelling you to image the entire drive like your proposed solution.

My data/time is worth way more than $40 to me, sure. But if I can do the same thing for $27, or even for free, even better. Can I plug in Time Machine every couple of weeks and still have a good enough result? Or will it take forever to make those backups because it hasn't been plugged in for a long time?

Fight? dd wins no contest.

It does. I use dd fairly regularly (tho' mainly on my Linux boxes) but it always, even after years of use, strikes fear into me because it is so powerful.

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Also, anyone on here use TimeMachineEditor and can recommend it?