Introduction
First, a little of the background and philosophy behind SuperDuper!
Backing up is one of those things that never seems important until something goes horribly wrong, and things never go horribly wrong until the worst possible moment. Many backup programs do too much for the “normal” user: rather than making it easy and faster to get their data backed up, they overcomplicate the process to the point of frustration.
That complexity can alienate and confuse users, and a proprietary, single- vendor format leaves them without an alternative should a problem arise. We think it’s important that any solution be easy to understand, usable, and not have any “lock in”.
Staying Balanced
So, to determine whether that complexity is worth adding, it’s important to ask: when do most people need to restore? In general, we’ve found that “regular users” (and by that, I mean real “end users” like yourself) need to use their backups when:
They’ve made a “bad mistake”, like accidentally deleting an important file, or overwriting one (this kind of mistake is almost always recognized immediately)
Their drive (or computer) fails catastrophically, requiring a full restore
They sent their computer in for service, and it came back wiped clean
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An application they installed, or a system update, caused their system
to become unusable/unstable
None of these situations require much other than a high-quality, up-to-date, full copy backup. (The last has a better solution than a backup – a “Sandbox” – which we offer in SuperDuper! as well.)
Covering the 99% Case
Given that, it’s pretty easy to see that most end users don’t need to retrieve a two-year-old (or even six-month old) version of a file from a backup. (An archive is a different thing: I’m talking about backups.) It’s just not that common a case. Developers, on the other hand, do need older versions of files, but they should be using a version control system: something a backup should absolutely not be.
But, it is possible that a user won’t notice a problem in a “bad file” until they’ve already overwritten their backup, thus losing any chance of recovery with a “full copy”. While this is a problem for some, we have a good solution: rotate more than one full backup.
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Any need for this kind of “temporal rollback” can be significantly reduced with a single rotation – say, on a weekly basis – and nearly eliminated with two, a weekly and a monthly. It’s incredibly rare that, on a non-archival basis, you’d need to go back more than four weeks.
Simple to Understand
The advantages to this kind of approach are many, not the least of which is that a non-technical user can easily understand what’s going on. It’s incredible how many people are confused by conventional backup terminology – “incremental”, “differential”, backups “sets” and the like. And, complicated storage mechanisms require a significant amount of expertise to perform a full recovery in the event of that all-too-common disaster: the total drive failure.
Simple to Restore
With SuperDuper!, recovery in that situation is literally a matter of booting from your most recent backup. And restoration – which, should you be on deadline, you need not do immediately – is just a matter of replacing the drive and copying back.
Individual files are also easy to restore: just drag and drop from the backup. (Yes, applications without drag-and-drop install, or system-level files, are harder, but can typically be reinstalled/archive-and-installed should that be necessary... or, see the Sandbox for another rather unique idea...)
Use It or Lose It
SuperDuper!’s approach is the kind of thing that regular end users like yourself can do, and feel confident about.
We know your time is valuable, and that a backup isn’t useful unless it’s recent and includes the files you expect. We’ve made the process of backing up extremely simple, and – with Smart Update – we’ve also made it fast and efficient.