"ignore" actually deletes stuff with smartupdate

[safar]

Hi !

SuperDuper rocks, i try to have as many clients buy it as possible.

But there is one dangerous misbehavior.

When you smart update a volume to a drive, anything that is in a path ignored on the volume will be deleted from the drive. For instance, let's say that you have a file in the /.Trashes/ folder of your drive. When you run a smart update, it will be deleted.
That might not be a problem with the Trash. But it's a problem for a lot of people who have the idea of ignoring .Spotight-v100 : the drive's index is removed.

It's also a problem for me. I want to make a clone of my system. But i also want to keep on my external hardrive 100 gigs of stuff. I cannot do a smartupdate because even if i store this stuff in an "ignored" folder, it will get deleted.

I suggest making another option besides "share","copy", and "ignore" : that would be "leave this folder as it is on the destination drive"

well, thanks anyway for the great work

[safar]

here is my dirty solution
1. i do a full backup copying different files

2. i run this script

PHP Code:

#!/bin/bash

#this must be run as root !

externaldrivename="ice" 

#replace ice with the name of your external hard drive (if it has spaces, put a \ before each space)


for i in Applications Library Developer System usr bin etc private sbin

do  
echo "let us check what should be deleted from $i"

rsync -n -rltv --delete /$i/ /Volumes/$externaldrivename/$i/

#do check what is gonna be deleted ; when you're sure, delete the " -n " (which forces rsync to do a dry run)

done 


(i volountarily ignored /Users, because i do want to keep files on the /Users folder of my external hard drive that are not on the volume from which i clone)

hope this helps someone !

[dnanian]

We've got a "preserve" option planned out that might allow this to happen in the future... but for now, it's important to remember that Smart Update is, as is documented, just like Erase, then copy, just faster... so, anything that's on the destination that's not in the selected set of files on the source will be removed.

The best thing to do is not keep things on the destination volume that are not backup files. Instead, partition the drive, and keep your "real" files there. It's much safer, and easier to restore, too... even with simple tools that don't allow any selection at all.

[homesick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

We've got a "preserve" option planned out that might allow this to happen in the future...
...the best thing to do is not keep things on the destination volume that are not backup files. Instead, partition the drive, and keep your "real" files there. It's much safer, and easier to restore, too... even with simple tools that don't allow any selection at all.

Oh well, the ice is broken. I've just done my first ever partitioning on a computer. I'm a switcher and I haven't even done this on a PC before. OK, I've created two partitions on my iOMEGA 250GB external HD with the help of Disc Utility, and I'm wondering if the size of 80 GB is enough for the true clone of my system. I have a Powerbook 15, 1,5 GHz with 512 RAM.

The idea here is that I clone my internal HD of 80GB capacity (where there's some 37 GB free and my intention is to keep at least 20 GB always free) onto the "iOMEGA-OS X clone" partition which is 80 GB big, and that the other partition is ca 155 GB and acts as my spare HD space that I can use for storing, editing music or film etc.

Right now (and I guess) while most of you in the US are in the dark, my Mac is zero-erasing the first partition of 80GB and I'll do the same with the other partition. Hopefully my Mac won't get a HD failure right now while I'm doing all this, I guess I'm not that unlucky...

So, is the size of 80 GB OK for the cloning partition or should I leave some 10GB "headroom"?

And if you suggest I increase the size of this partition, do I need to zero-erase it again after resizing?

Thank you kindly in advance.

[dnanian]

That should be just fine, homesick; since you're leaving headroom on the original drive anyway.

There's nothing wrong with partitioning, as long as it's done for a reason...

[homesick]

Thank you, the partitioning went well and this night is the first time I'll do the full Backup/clone.

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by homesick

Oh well, the ice is broken. I've just done my first ever partitioning on a computer. I'm a switcher and I haven't even done this on a PC before. OK, I've created two partitions on my iOMEGA 250GB external HD with the help of Disc Utility, and I'm wondering if the size of 80 GB is enough for the true clone of my system. I have a Powerbook 15, 1,5 GHz with 512 RAM.

The idea here is that I clone my internal HD of 80GB capacity (where there's some 37 GB free and my intention is to keep at least 20 GB always free) onto the "iOMEGA-OS X clone" partition which is 80 GB big, and that the other partition is ca 155 GB and acts as my spare HD space that I can use for storing, editing music or film etc.

Right now (and I guess) while most of you in the US are in the dark, my Mac is zero-erasing the first partition of 80GB and I'll do the same with the other partition. Hopefully my Mac won't get a HD failure right now while I'm doing all this, I guess I'm not that unlucky...

So, is the size of 80 GB OK for the cloning partition or should I leave some 10GB "headroom"?

And if you suggest I increase the size of this partition, do I need to zero-erase it again after resizing?

Thank you kindly in advance.

I get the result you're looking for by backing up to a sparse image and then using Smart Update on that. This works for me because I don't leave archival material on my boot disk, so the size of the clone doesn't change much. Otherwise I'd have to keep making bigger Sparse Images; this is why I can't use this method for my archives, which grow all the time.

[homesick]

Originally Posted by Pisces

I get the result you're looking for by backing up to a sparse image and then using Smart Update on that. This works for me because I don't leave archival material on my boot disk, so the size of the clone doesn't change much. Otherwise I'd have to keep making bigger Sparse Images; this is why I can't use this method for my archives, which grow all the time.

Thank you for the input and, of course, it's one of the very good ways to do it. In my case, I know that my clone would never become bigger than those 80GB that the internal HD has, and I somehow believe that the other partition of ca 160GB is gong to be enough for the most actual archiving :-) Oh well...

Now I've cloned for the first time and rebooted from it, tested it a little, everything went great. I feel very confident with my Powerbook now and I don't fear the internal HD crash any more. I run the Smart Update after every day of work, I let the SD put my PB to sleep, fine.

Thanks kindly everyone.

[calum]

Originally Posted by safar

I suggest making another option besides "share","copy", and "ignore" : that would be "leave this folder as it is on the destination drive"

+1 for that feature I currently get around it with some custom "before" and "after" shell scripts in the Options dialog. They copy stuff from my external drive to my local drive before the backup happens, so that the smart update doesn't delete that stuff from the external drive. After the backup is complete, a second shell script deletes the stuff from the local drive again that I only want to keep on the external drive.

[dnanian]

That'll work, Calum.

Another sneaky trick is to create a symlink from the source to the destination, in the exact same location. (In other words, if you have a folder called "Foo" at the top of the destination that you want to save, symlink to it from the source, with a symlink named "Foo". We won't overwrite a folder or file with a symlink to that file...)