Carbon Copy Cloner vs Super Duper vs Sychonize!

Question

Level 1

4 points

Carbon Copy Cloner vs Super Duper vs Sychonize!

I asked about backing up external HDs with TBs of photographic Archives in regards to Time Machine- not the right program. For example, I have HD 1A and 1B- 1A being my primary archive and 1B being back-up that I keep offsite. Thing is, I want an easy quick way to Back-up JUST THE UPDATED FILES from 1A to 1B at the times that I bring the B drives in for Back-up.
Seems the programs I want are Carbon Copy Cloner, Sychonize! or Super Duper. Does anyone have some pros or cons about these programs? Is one better than the others? Reasons?
Thanks!

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 20, 2009 12:26 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Feb 20, 2009 12:34 PM in response to Cloverick

SuperDuper! is a good program for cloning your hard drive and doing basic updates to the clone. Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent cloning tool like SuperDuper! with some basic backup flexibility. However, if you need heavy duty backup capabilities with extensive scheduling and other options, ease of configuration, no-scripting configuration, use of network drives, etc. then Synchronize! Pro X is the best of the three by a long shot. Only Retrospect provides more features such as searchable index files, tape drive support, can backup over multiple media for both tape and CD/DVD backups.

Synchronize! Pro X can even be configured to start a backup automatically whenever the backup drive is connected or brought online.

Reply

Answer 2

Cloverick Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2009 12:45 PM in response to Cloverick

Thanks Kappy,
I'm thinking Sychronize! Pro might be overkill, I tend to like to keep my fingers in the mix and am only stepping up from doing EVERYTHING manually. Also, I'll likely be gearing up to a desktop soon and want to keep things simple until I have more complex apparatus.... Super Duper seems to have pretty good reviews online.
Really, all I need to do is plug in a B drive and have anything that has been added, removed or changed on the A drive updated to that B drive.

Reply

Answer 3

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Feb 20, 2009 12:50 PM in response to Cloverick

Cloverick wrote:
Really, all I need to do is plug in a B drive and have anything that has been added, removed or changed on the A drive updated to that B drive.

If that's all you need, SuperDuper will do a fine job of it. I use it daily to do exactly that.

Reply

Answer 4

Feb 20, 2009 12:55 PM in response to Király

CCC ! HIghly recommended.

Reply

Answer 5

Cloverick Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2009 1:24 PM in response to Cloverick

Hi there, the two issues I see between SD and CCC are that CCC has been said not to record metadata (this may be old news and since addressed) and, more importantly, the capacity for incremental updating. Does SD do this? Means that, on a 1TB drive for example, only the 30mb (2 seconds) of the only file I've worked on since last ** will be changed, not the whole 1TB (1 day) disk. Does SD do this? Cheers!

Reply

Answer 6

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Feb 20, 2009 1:33 PM in response to Cloverick

I'm pretty sure that CCC now properly copies all metadata. There was an ACL issue but it was fixed in a recent update.

SD will also do what you ask (incremental updating), but only after you pay the shareware fee. In free demo mode it can only copy the entire disk.

Reply