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Old 08-20-2007, 06:34 AM
cefiro cefiro is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 1
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.
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