Application for Cloning a Hard Drive

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Reading the Time Machine thread reminded my that I haven't cloned the hard drive yet for my Mac Pro. In the past I've used Carbon Copy Cloner, which I didn't find very intuitive, especially when it came to cloning a bootable drive. I've noticed that several people have mentioned Superduper. How does Superduper compare with Carbon Copy Cloner for cloning a bootable drive, especially in terms of ease of use, reliability and speed?



Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    It's very easy to use, you pick a source drive and a destination and click go. The unregistered version only lets you run the script which erases your backup drive and then clones everything onto it and makes it bootable.



    The speed is decent and will clone 250GB in about 2 hours 45 minutes. Another benchmark is 30GB in 45 minutes.



    It seems to speed up the longer it is transferring and it will go faster for large files as opposed to lots of small files.



    On average expect about 1GB per minute.



    I don't use it much because I just clone once and then update the backup manually but it has never failed on me.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    I bought SuperDuper, and I don't regret it. It's never failed me. It's worth the money; really. I've also tried CCC, and I definately haven't been as impressed.



    The best part of SuperDuper is the smart backup feature, which allows you to make an up-to-date clone of your hard drive in just a few minutes. Until Time Machine comes out, it's your best bet.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    cakecake Posts: 1,010member
    +1 on SuperDuper!
  • Reply 4 of 10
    Is there any way for SuperDuper to backup my MacBook 60 gigger to a folder on my Maxtor 300 gigger?
  • Reply 5 of 10
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Galley View Post


    Is there any way for SuperDuper to backup my MacBook 60 gigger to a folder on my Maxtor 300 gigger?



    No, but you can backup to an image on it.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    Actually, you can just make a 60 gig partition on your 300 gigger and back it up to that, as long as you don't mind your 300 gig showing up as two separate hard drives. I did this with my pb, and I'm happy as a clam.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by flinch13 View Post


    Actually, you can just make a 60 gig partition on your 300 gigger and back it up to that, as long as you don't mind your 300 gig showing up as two separate hard drives. I did this with my pb, and I'm happy as a clam.



    Galley specifically said "folder", though, implying they don't want to create a partition.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    SuperDuper user here.



    The best out there I have used. I use to use CCC but SuperDuper has become more user friendly and has built in scheduling. I backup my disk every night at 2 am with SuperDuper. It has saved my a$$ more than once. I do a weekly backup to a sparseimage over the network once a week too.



    Once Leopard comes out I am going to see what shakes out with home directory synching. I will probably purchase Leopard Server and setup a dedicated MacPro or iMac G5 (I have this already) as a big file server and server on my home network to keep home directory's sync'd on all my computers in my house.



    Until then, SuperDuper is the bomb.
  • Reply 9 of 10
    mrsinmrsin Posts: 163member
    Another fan of SuperDuper! here 8) . I use it to backup both "Genie," my iBook G4 and "Maggie," my 24-inch Intel Core 2 Duo iMac to my 300GB external Firewire / USB Maxtor disk. Using "smart" backup, it is very fast as it only copies new or changed files since the last backup to make the backup mirror the original.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    Well, I did download SuperDuper and used it to clone my MacPro boot drive. It seemed much easier to use than Carbon Copy Cloner and it provided more information as to what was going on than did CCC. It took about 2 1/2 hours to back up approximately 235GBs to a Seagate 400 Pushbutton Backup external hard drive using a Firewire 400 connection. Overall, it was a great choice and thanks for all the feedback.



    One pet peeve-- there's some great bargains right now on Seagate and Maxtor external drives but these drives seem to be geared to Windows users as they don't come with Firewire 800. Still for the price, one shouldn't really complain.
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