The following applications were features in the Backup and Recovery seminar.
Reviews by Diane Petersen, Kachemacs
SuperDuper!
Product Title: SuperDuper!
Developer: Shirt Pocket Software
URL: http://www.shirt-pocket.com
Price: $27.95
Pros: Free “lite” version, special “Sandbox” feature
Cons: Scheduler a bit unintuitive, a bit unwieldy for a solitary backup method.
Heroic system recovery for mere mortals! I imagine the developer wearing a suit and a cape with a hard drive icon on it (sorry, Dave!)
I covered the difference between different types of backup in the backup seminar. SuperDuper creates a backup by cloning your hard drive. This clone happens to be bootable. The result of this operation is such that you can be 5 minutes before a presentation and your hard drive decides to give up the ghost. Simply restart the computer with the SuperDuper clone attached, and you will boot into the exact system configuration you had on your last backup before the failure. Just go to your Time Machine drive and grab the files that may have changed since the last SuperDuper. In 5 minutes you are ready to go, and your clients are oblivious to the fact something VERY BAD has happened.
You’re saying “Time Machine?” Where did that come from? SuperDuper is great for keeping a complete bootable backup, but it’s a bit retro. If you use it once a week, you lose the last 4 or 5 or 6 days or so. But you finished that presentation last night. If you have Leopard, you can run Time Machine on your home folder or even your whole system and have intermittent dynamic file archival to use alongside SuperDuper. For other cats, there’s always dot Mac’s Backup 3.
If you tinker with your system a lot, Sandbox may be for you. It keeps a buffer copy of your System Folder so if you download that dodgy piece of software that you hate and it digs its tentacles into your system and clogs it up, you can simply roll back to the old configuration.
Remember, you must have a firewire drive for PPC to make it bootable. USB only works on Intel Macs. This is Apple’s fault, not SuperDuper’s
One feature (???) that is just plain weird is the scheduler’s assumption that I want to make a new schedule, when I just want to check the old one. You get a dropdown menu with a new schedule before you get to look at the old one. I think this is on purpose but the reason eludes me.
Ease of use: 5
Stability: 4 – I’ve had it freeze up while repairing permissions, perhaps that’s Apple’s fault.
Support: 5 – This guy stands behind the product.
Documentation: 5 – Excellent
Features: 4 – It doesn’t make my coffee in the morning, but it does finish the backup and put my Mac to bed for me.
I really have to scrounge up flaws with this one, but I have to believe nobody is perfect. Except me. I can give this product a high five for the security it gives me.
MacDrive 7
Product Title: MacDrive 7
Distributor: Mediafour
Distributor URL: http://www.mediafour.com
Pros: Can be run on a Boot Camp that is also a VM image, invisible interface on the PC side.
Cons: A license is needed on EVERY PC used, issues if installed on a VM.
Macs and PCs. Like their users, they can have a problem playing nice with each other. MacDrive may not be able to help their users get along, but it will improve communication between their machines.
Many Mac users have an old PC about the house. If they don’t, they may have one at work or they may have a Boot Camp partition. MacDrive can help these users access their data on any of their machines.
PCs and Macs generally use different formats for their hard disks. A result of this is the inability to use removable drives formatted for one type on both types of machine. Also, users of Boot Camp cannot get to their files on the Mac partition. MacDrive bridges this barrier to make dual boot machines and removable drives simple to use.
MacDrive is PC software, installed on a PC. It allows the PC to read Mac formatted drives. This gives me the ability to boot into Windows and still read my Mac formatted backup drive and internal hard drive. I can also use my portable drive on any PC in the house as well as my Mac. Using my portable drive to transfer large files is a lot faster than transferring over the network for me.
I found another incidental use for MacDrive. I experienced a hard drive failure on my external drive. None of my Mac recovery tools could access the drive. It seemed like I would have to give up on the data on the drive. I tried mounting it on the old PC with MacDrive installed, and I was able to access the data and move the parts I wanted to the PC before the drive completely failed.
One problem I experienced with this software is that the activation sequence wreaks havoc on my virtual machine through Fusion. MacDrive works well on Boot Camp when I am booted into it, but if I use the same image through Fusion, the activation is not recognized and I get a warning screen. There is really no reason to need this software if a virtual machine is running, but things can get a bit tricky to set up. This product behaves better than a competing product for Mac with virtual machines, however.
MacDrive was not designed for emulating Macintosh. It will not launch Mac programs on a PC, nor will it install MacOS on a PC. It will not necessarily allow reading of documents saved with a Mac based word processor. Its specific design allows access to universal file types saved on a Mac formatted disk. With this purpose clear, I make the following points:
Utility: 5 (essential for anyone running both PC and Mac)
Stability: 3 (very strange problems with activation if using a VM)
UI: 5 (absolutely simple. Mac drives look just like PC drives except for the little apple on them.)
Documentation: 4 (not much is needed for this simple utility)
Support: 5 (very quick responses from both tech support and sales.)
Value: 3 (seems high, but each additional license is reduced price)
I’m giving this utility a 4 overall. It is a good solid utility within its limitations. The price tag is a bit high compared with utilities that function similarly, but for me it’s well worth it for the convenience.
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