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I am sure a number of folks around here have seen many, many statements about the need for backups. And, a number of folks who have arrived here with an issue, but had no backups at all, could not get their issue resolved (or else it took a lot of time and effort). Well, I'm happy to report that SuperDuper! saved me headaches earlier today. Let me explain.
As I do every Saturday, I went through my disk cleanups and maintenance tasks, and backups, for both of my Macs. And, I do two backups for each of my machines to separate external hard drives. So, after I completed all that, I shut down my MacBook Air, and proceeded to use my MacMini. As expected, everything was running fine. But, after surfing the web and downloading some items, I began having some weird problems with my Mac Mini. For all 3 of my browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), the home page changed from this site to some new (and ?strange?) search site. I also got some strange popup about some software that could be set/reset via System Preferences. I was able to remove all the "pieces" associated with it, but I also saw some questionable software installed inside my Applications folder.
So, instead of trying to play detective and research all those issues, I decided to just do a restore from the just completed SuperDuper! backup. I selected one of my external drives that had the backup, and restarted the MacMini from that (SuperDuper! creates a bootable backup). The only somewhat "minor" issue I had is that it did take some time for the boot process to complete. The external drive is a 7200 rpm Seagate drive, and the connection is via Firewire 800. But, it finally came up.
I then started SuperDuper!, and selected Restore from the backup to the internal SSD on my Mac Mini. It first completely erases everything on the SSD, and then does a complete restore of everything from the backup. Once that completed, I rebooted from the SSD, and was back in business. The entire process took about 35 to 40 minutes.
So, to say SuperDuper! is a life saver is definitely an understatement! The one thing I still need to do is to re-create the hidden Recovery HD partition, as SuperDuper! does not back that up (Carbon Copy Cloner does). I actually don't need it, given that 1) I have better disk maintenance software (TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior) than Disk Utility, and 2) I can easily recover to a full OS installation if I need to. But, I'll go ahead and create it anyway. (I have a script developed by another party that can do that easily).
Finally, when the price of 512 gig SSDs falls some more, I will most likely purchase one, install it inside a nice, slim external case, and do my SuperDuper! backups to it. That should made booting from such an external SSD faster, although it will be via USB 3.0 (I have yet to find any slim, 2 1/2" external enclosures with a Firewire 800 interface. I could use thunderbolt,but such an interface is somewhat expensive). I will keep one of my external Seagate drives for doing backups also, along with storing other files.
As I do every Saturday, I went through my disk cleanups and maintenance tasks, and backups, for both of my Macs. And, I do two backups for each of my machines to separate external hard drives. So, after I completed all that, I shut down my MacBook Air, and proceeded to use my MacMini. As expected, everything was running fine. But, after surfing the web and downloading some items, I began having some weird problems with my Mac Mini. For all 3 of my browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), the home page changed from this site to some new (and ?strange?) search site. I also got some strange popup about some software that could be set/reset via System Preferences. I was able to remove all the "pieces" associated with it, but I also saw some questionable software installed inside my Applications folder.
So, instead of trying to play detective and research all those issues, I decided to just do a restore from the just completed SuperDuper! backup. I selected one of my external drives that had the backup, and restarted the MacMini from that (SuperDuper! creates a bootable backup). The only somewhat "minor" issue I had is that it did take some time for the boot process to complete. The external drive is a 7200 rpm Seagate drive, and the connection is via Firewire 800. But, it finally came up.
I then started SuperDuper!, and selected Restore from the backup to the internal SSD on my Mac Mini. It first completely erases everything on the SSD, and then does a complete restore of everything from the backup. Once that completed, I rebooted from the SSD, and was back in business. The entire process took about 35 to 40 minutes.
So, to say SuperDuper! is a life saver is definitely an understatement! The one thing I still need to do is to re-create the hidden Recovery HD partition, as SuperDuper! does not back that up (Carbon Copy Cloner does). I actually don't need it, given that 1) I have better disk maintenance software (TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior) than Disk Utility, and 2) I can easily recover to a full OS installation if I need to. But, I'll go ahead and create it anyway. (I have a script developed by another party that can do that easily).
Finally, when the price of 512 gig SSDs falls some more, I will most likely purchase one, install it inside a nice, slim external case, and do my SuperDuper! backups to it. That should made booting from such an external SSD faster, although it will be via USB 3.0 (I have yet to find any slim, 2 1/2" external enclosures with a Firewire 800 interface. I could use thunderbolt,but such an interface is somewhat expensive). I will keep one of my external Seagate drives for doing backups also, along with storing other files.
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