Super Duper

Once you've written over a large amount of data, it is highly unusual that you can recover data from the same drive. You can try with one of the data recovery tools on my backup FAQ*:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html#RECOVER

Note, Superduper under normal circumstances has two backup capabilities:

1. Smart update - ensures the content of the destination is exactly the same as the original.

2. Backup to a blank drive.

Edit: both these options are bootable clones.

Additional scripts are possible with Superduper to establish what items get copied/removed in the process of the backup, or whether you just do a folder to folder of large files which may not be possible with standard Finder copying. If you are unsure of what happened or why, I would contact Shirt Pocket directly.

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Message was edited by: a brody

If the Time Machine backup was on the same partition as the manual backup, and it was that partition to which you cloned the internal HD, I'm surprised it didn't wipe the Time Machine backup. Cloning a disk means making the disk you are cloning to an exact copy of the original, invisible files and all, and this means deleting anything which isn't on the original.

As to recovery, there are a few file recovery programs out there (try Google or someone here may suggest one) but it's a dubious procedure, and if you've been using this disk at all since the event there's a good chance you've already overwritten some of your missing files. There are professional file recovery services which are likely to be much better than programs you can buy, but they are extremely expensive.

You shouldn't be surprised that SD deleted whatever was already on your external drive, when you told it to make an exact duplicate of your internal drive.

As for recovery, it's unlikely that you can recover any of the deleted data. There are commercial products with names such as "Data Rescue" that claim to be able to do it. Your best chance would be to send the drive to a recovery service such as DriveSavers, but that would be very expensive and might not work.

Leggendario wrote:
To my surprise after the duplicate was done when I checked the content of my external HD the manual backup folder was missing and probably (sure off) was deleted by Super Duper when it was on the process of putting the clone content on my HD.

This is expected. SuperDuper makes a clone. A clone means an exact copy, and that means exact, so anything on the target drive that isn't part of the source drive needs to be removed or it won't be an exact copy.
SuperDuper warns you of this very clearly: "...will copy *and erase* what's needed to make (target drive) identical to your selections from (source drive)."

The other thing that I discovered is that it didn't delete the content of my Time Machine Backup.

Which SuperDuper option did you choose? Under "Options," SuperDuper provides four:
Erase, then Copy
Smart Update
Copy newer files from (source drive) to (target drive)
Copy different files from (source drive) to (target drive)

It is possible that your setting allowed the Time Machine files to live if their time stamps excluded them from deletion based on your selection.

In the future, though, you never want to mix SD and TM backups. Put them on separate drives, or at least on different partitions of the same drive.

SuperDuper has a built-in special provision for Time Machine.

From this SuperDuper FAQ support page:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?s=eb00735c4ae761a33e3967210376 3909&t=3566
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How do I store a bootable backup side-by-side with my Time Machine data?
======================
It's actually really simple. Assuming the Time Machine volume is properly partitioned and formatted for the Mac (as "GUID" for Intel Macs, or "Apple Partition Map" for Power PC), and is boot compatible to start with, just use "Backup - all files" with Smart Update to store a bootable backup on the drive. Your Time Machine backups will be preserved.

The What's going to happen? section of the main window will tell you exactly what will happen to your Time Machine data.

Note that it's better to store your SuperDuper! backup on its own partition, because Time Machine will eventually take over the entire drive... but it's not required, and if you have a large backup drive and a relatively small source, it will take a very long time.

Finally, if you do have your backup side-by-side with Time Machine data, and you want to start up from it and do a full restore, use the "Restore - all files" script rather than "Backup - all files". This works just like "Backup - all files", but skips the Time Machine data (which you don't want copied).
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I tried setting this up using my Time Machine volume as a target, just to see the "What's going to happen" window, but I didn't then proceed. Here's the window I got:
.

jsd2 wrote:
SuperDuper has a built-in special provision for Time Machine.

Wow, thanks, I never knew that.
As it says, though, it still won't keep Time Machine's constant versioning from eventually using up all the free space.