Shirt Pocket Discussions

Shirt Pocket Discussions (https://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/index.php)
-   General (https://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6)
-   -   My SuperDuper! failure story - or: if only I hadn't purchased this application! (https://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2757)

cefiro 08-20-2007 06:34 AM

My SuperDuper! failure story - or: if only I hadn't purchased this application!
 
On my quest for a suitable backup solution I stumbled across SuperDuper!, a highly praised application, if you do a search on several forums. For me, SuperDuper! became to be mere nightmare and though I unfortunately already paid for it, SD! IMHO absolutely sucks!

Sorry, but yes, that's my opinion. I only purchased SD! yesterday and meanwhile managed to destroy approx. 50GB of my backed up data - irretrievably. Why? Well, you might call me too stupid to use SD!, fair enough.

But actually all I did was trying to find my preferred set of configuration (including scripts in order to exclude some root folders of my machine) when setting up my various backup rules / strategies, among which is the synchronization of specific folders, e.g. my MP3 folder. While trying to find the perfect combination of settings and creating suitable scripts, I did not realize that - automagically - SD! at some point in time reverted back to its obviously standard setting of first erasing the target drive before backing up data... and yet even better, it's doing that without a warning. It's also very hard to realize as a user that now you're target drive will be evaporated, simply because the 'real' settings are hidden behind that peculiar 'prosaic startup'
page of the app instead of displaying proper options with check boxes or radio buttons. I admit once again that I may be to stupid for this kind of 'advanced UI'. Anyway, the result of my : SD! deleted everything on my external target drive - and gone was the data, among which my music collection as well as my software archive!!!

Another result of my attempts of making SD! work the way it's useful for me was to find out that it is in no way designed to do folder synchronization. All SD! can do is *clone* absolute paths on your disk and give you the very limited ability to exlude folders you don't want in your backup. But you still are forced to retain the paths as they are on your hard drive. Folder synchronization seems to be too sophisticated a task to accomplish for SD!.

My conclusion after really trying very hard for literally a full day now: a very poor app for the money you pay and only useful in a very limited way. Sorry I have to say that, but there's much better value for your money out there. And for me, the price was even higher, losing my valuable data. I cannot recomment SuperDuper! at all.

dnanian 08-20-2007 09:10 AM

I'm sorry you feel that way, cefiro. I've never claimed that SuperDuper! did "folder synchronization", and -- had you dropped me a line to support -- I would have been happy to clarify that point for you. Did you find something I wrote that implied otherwise? If so, I'd really like to correct that, since I have no desire to mislead people about SD!'s capabilities.

As far as "reverting back to the obviously standard setting of first erasing the drive...", I've literally never seen SuperDuper!'s options change "by themselves". Could you elaborate on how this happened?

(Note that even if you're unwilling to read the first sentence of the "peculiar" interface, where the copy method is called out, there's a second confirmation/warning that appears when you click Copy Now, and that clearly indicates what copy option has been selected, to ensure that you don't do something like this by mistake... did that not appear?)

Finally -- have you tried using Data Rescue II to recover the erased data from the drive? If you haven't done much to it at this point, it's quite possible that the data is still there and can be recovered, at least in part.

Hope that helps, at least a bit.

davep 08-21-2007 01:22 AM

SuperDuper! couldn't be any easier
 
I think SuperDuper is simply the best... it confirms with the user what it's going to do before it does it... in plain English! What could be simpler than that?


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 08:28 PM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.