Super Duper vs Carbon Copy Cloner. Which do you like better and why?

After reading this thread, I will probably be moving from CCC to SD for the simple reason of economics - when two products do the same thing (for my purposes) and the only major difference is price, I go with the one that costs less. SD is $28 vs CCC at $40. I just don't see anything in the latter that would justify a 42.8% premium over the former. CCC is great and I've been happy with it for years on my PPC Macs, but unfortunately they've priced themselves out of the market.

romad wrote:

After reading this thread, I will probably be moving from CCC to SD for the simple reason of economics - when two products do the same thing (for my purposes) and the only major difference is price, I go with the one that costs less. SD is $28 vs CCC at $40. I just don't see anything in the latter that would justify a 42.8% premium over the former. CCC is great and I've been happy with it for years on my PPC Macs, but unfortunately they've priced themselves out of the market.

CCC will clone the recovery drive, SD won't. That alone is worth $12 to me.

Disk Utility is free, and superior to SD, save all your money.

romad wrote:

I go with the one that costs less. SD is $28 vs CCC at $40. I just don't see anything in the latter that would justify a 42.8% premium over the former. CCC is great and I've been happy with it for years on my PPC Macs, but unfortunately they've priced themselves out of the market.

Cheaper isn't always better. Your choice though. This might be of interest:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/wwdc_working_for_apple_wasnt_enough_mike_ bombich

I can't find anything in DU about making a bootable clone; what am I missing?

IIRC, the "Recovery Drive" merely replaces the old Bootable DVD that came with previous versions of Mac OS; if you have a bootable clone it isn't needed. Or you can boot from a USB flashdrive that has the installer on it.

romad wrote:

I can't find anything in DU about making a bootable clone; what am I missing?

DU calls it a Disk Image, and pushing the button thus labelled will create one.

To clarify, DU can only make a bootable clone by using the restore option. That requires having a source and target that are on separate volumes, since they need to be unmountable. DU uses the ASR (Apple Software Restore) engine to make a block-level copy, which is inefficient for most users, since it copies unnecessary items. See http://help.bombich.com/kb/explore/some-files-and-folders-are-automatically-excl uded-from-a-backup-task for items CCC excludes and http://help.bombich.com/kb/explore/the-block-level-copy for details on block-level clones. Finally, do note that disk images made with DU or CCC are not bootable.

Ah, I see. I've always considered a bootable clone on an external hard drive to be different than just a backup to a disk image file. If I just copy the latter to a hard drive, I don't think I can connect that drive to a suitable Mac and have the Mac boot from it, or has something changed with Lion?

romad wrote:

Ah, I see. I've always considered a bootable clone on an external hard drive to be different than just a backup to a disk image file. If I just copy the latter to a hard drive, I don't think I can connect that drive to a suitable Mac and have the Mac boot from it, or has something changed with Lion?

Yes you can, provided that the Mac and the version of OSX on the clone are compatible. I use an iMac at home that has had a dead internal for ages, it's connected externally to a drive and boots from that. (The clone was made with CCC which is what I recommend)

I've always considered a bootable clone on an external hard drive to be different than just a backup to a disk image file.

They are. See my previous.

Our posts crossed; I was writing mine when yours posted so I couldn't see it before I clicked on the "Add Reply" button.

baltwo wrote:

romad wrote:

I go with the one that costs less. SD is $28 vs CCC at $40. I just don't see anything in the latter that would justify a 42.8% premium over the former. CCC is great and I've been happy with it for years on my PPC Macs, but unfortunately they've priced themselves out of the market.

Cheaper isn't always better. Your choice though. This might be of interest:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/wwdc_working_for_apple_wasnt_enough_mike_ bombich

Interesting article. However, you left off the fist part of my post: "After reading this thread, I will probably be moving from CCC to SD for the simple reason of economics - when two products do the same thing (for my purposes) and the only major difference is price, I go with the one that costs less. ..." (emphasis added). Since I don't clone to a network drive, I don't need that feature, and without it I don't see a big enough difference to justify me spending 42.8% more. I will admit that in the last line of my post it would have been better to say "my market" instead of "the market".

As for believers that a higher price means a better "value" and vice versa, I'm not one of those; if I was, I'd buy Ferraris as my daily car! 😉 I'm willing to be convinced though, if I can see an objective feature-by-feature comparison test from a Consumer Reports type. Perhaps I'll just stay with CCC 3.4 for now as it seems to work just fine in Lion.

I didn't miss anything. $10 USD is well worth it for the increased performance and features that CCC brings to the table. That said, I'm biased, since I moderated the CCC forums for over six years before it went commercial.

Does CCC do auto mount/unmount? I can't see how to get Superduper to get this?

I'm getting frustrated with not having an auto-mount/unmount now as Final Cut Pro X always has a hiccup if it starts seeing two disks with the same videos on...

Perhaps if CCC or Superduper can't do this I should just go to Time Machine in an attempt to move away from all the daily manual mounting / unmounting I have to do?....

I don't know. I only do manual backups and just fire up the ext HD, which mounts automatically. I suggest that you post your query at http://help.bombich.com/discussions. They'll gladly answer your question.