Every Mac sold since the launch of OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has had a copy of Apple’s backup software, Time Machine, included.
And thank goodness for that, because backups were the elephant in the computer industry’s room. Everyone knew it was essential to keep backups, and everyone knew that most people just didn’t bother.
Time Machine made backups so simple that you didn’t need to bother. Just plug in an external drive, tell Time Machine where it is, and forget about it. Until the day comes – as it inevitably will – when your hard disk goes kaput, and you need to restore your system.
The only problem with Time Machine backups is that they’re not bootable. You can’t use one as your working system when disaster strikes.
That’s why Superduper is an essential extra for your Mac. It does almost the same job as Time Machine, but in a slightly different way. The backups it creates are bootable. That means you can plug them in and tell your computer to treat them like the real thing.
That means that if your hardware lets you down just an hour before you’re due to go to the Big Pitch Meeting with MegeClient Inc, all you need do is boot from your Superduper! backup drive and keep working.
Superduper is flexible, simple to use, and works happily alongside Time Machine (even sharing the same backup drive if need be). It comes with lots of advanced features for those who need them, but works as you’d expect for everyone else. For just under $30, it offers peace of mind at a reasonable price.
(You’re reading the 42nd post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more, or grab the RSS feed.)
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
21 responses to “Bootable Backups Are Easier With Superduper [50 Mac Essentials #42]”
I’ve used Super Duper for years and it’s saved me several times from hard disk crashes. I also use it to clone my Mac Pro desktop computer to my laptop when I have to go out on the road. I just put the laptop (2010 MacBook Pro 17″) in Firewire disk mode (reboot holding down the “T” key) then connecting via Firewire and doing a Super Duper copy. I get EVERYTHING on my laptop from my desktop computer so that I have a portable office with ALL of my files and emails. Nice!
I am grateful for SuperDuper – it’s the best mac software since Casady & Greene ‘s ConflictCatcher (old System 7 extension manager that worked).
You can use it for full backups with $ 0.00 investment (I bought a copy when my QNAP-TmeMachine couldn’t migrate with LION-OS – that’s fine now):))Â BTW kaputt has a double-t in the german language ;-)
Looks good, but won’t replace Carbon Copy Cloner for me… which is free. This’ll be a good choice for newbies though.
i been using CCC carbon copy its been working pretty well plus its free, is super duper better in anyway? they sound like they preform the exact task.
Carbon Copy Cloner is free and does the same job. I have booted from my CCC drive on several different macs.
I’ve used both over the years and there’s not much one can do that the either can’t. SuperDuper is a fine application, but there’s little reason to pay for it over CCC for the typical user.
The basic version of SuperDuper is free.
One of the issues I have with all of the MAC utilities (that I know of) is that you can’t seem to include the Boot Camp partitions in the backups.Â
The bootable issue doesn’t seem like that big of a deal with Lion
If you really like it you should send some money to the developer – it’s only fair.
It’s only a matter of time probably before Apple locks down and seals off Mac OS X. Then, Applications like this would be removed from the App Store, due to them accessing ‘system resources’, God forbid all we want to make is something that can clean out the user cache and temporary data, but Apple won’t allow that! The progression is already happening with Mac OS X 10.8, and it’s likely Apple will shock billions of computer users in this world, if they stop supporting 3rd party, that would likely mean no Windows BootCamp either, as it would probably be: “Too unsecure and exploitable” because it involves doing things to the bootloader! Well if that would be the case, you might as well say goodbye to downloading off of the internet and using bootable disks, too. If everything is verified, that would mean you can only get software, etc, through that company, thus, no competition if Apple’s going to try and patent everything.
My opposition is that Apple is trying to go for major (possibly even global) domination of the market, thus if that were to happen, we would all be likely doomed. Just want to advise you all.
Just a theory, so only time will tell if Apple would make such a brutal move. This would be the end of it all.