Super Duper
February 20, 2008 by shiva
If the biblical prophets had been cyberculture visionaries like William GIbson & Bruce Sterling, they might have named the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse "Complete Data Loss":
"And when he opened the fifth seal, I heard the voice of the fifth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a trojan horse! And its rider’s name was Data Loss, and Hardware Failure followed him…."
There is no sight more terrifying than your computer trying to boot, stalling on an opening screen "the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" 1; no sound more disheartening than the swan song of silence, when even the death rattle of your hard drive you have so desperately been ignoring has finally ceased, killing any hope of fulfilling promises to your clients.
Recovery from such a tragic loss can be time-consuming and even unrewarding without a practical backup strategy already in place. Recovery will require reinstallation of all software and plugins and patches and updates. The resurrection of your data will be almost impossible without the help of very VERY expensive data recovery specialists.
UNLESS you have backups.
We might have a discussion here about personal preferences; Dr. Roach (our publisher) seems to be fond of Memeo’s LifeAgent . I am undeniably a fan of Shirt Pocket’s Super Duper and have written about it in a previous article.
If you are cheap (which I am), Super Duper will back up your hard drive on demand and create a bootable backup in the process. For FREE. If you decide to invest $27.95 in the safety of your data (which I did), you are rewarded with smart updates and scheduling plus scripting functions.
Only after I forked over the dough did I realized that I couldn’t live without the regularly scheduled backups I get from Super Duper. Every Sunday night, my computer backs itself up then shuts itself off.
The latest version is compatible with Leopard (which i don’t own), does something special with Time Machine which I don’t understand or care about.
Being able to get back to work is enough for me.
1 from the first sentence of William GIbson’s Neuromancer- 1984. "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"