What's best: CCC or SuperDuper for bootable backups on Leopard?

CarbonCopyCloner is free. SuperDuper is $27.95 for full functionality.

I would tend to assume that any slowness perceived would be a function of how much data was in the incremental change, as well as what type of connection is used for the external drive.

For example, Apple’s USB 2.0 implementation is noticeably slower than Windows… hence Firewire’s popularity on the Mac platform.

So, you need to take more into account than just the software. Under the covers, many of those are very similar in how they operate.

yeah, my (limited) understanding is that both programs are just GUI front-ends to unix-y command line stuff.

The price of SD is not so high so it really doesn’t matter… just wondering which one is better, in a user’s opinion

Well, no complaints from me re: CCC.

It does tend to build up incremental copies over time, which you have to handle manually (or otherwise).

I’m in the middle of shifting off of CCC in favor of Time Machine for incremental b/u anyway. Then in that case, I’ll probably just use CCC to make nitely/weekly bootdisk builds. The idea there being that I can boot off of the bootable image, and then completely restore via Time Machine.

Honestly, I don’t see the problem in Time Machine. Its very capable, and it does its job well. I guess the only problem would be un-boot able copy of the system. But you could always do a clean install, and then turn back time on ‘Macintosh HD’

@ipo- yeah, the idea is to have a bootable backup on a separate physical drive just in case (a lot easier to boot a backup OSX copy from another volume than reinstalling it altogether)

glad to hear Time Machine is working well for you, though…I haven’t dove into it yet.

Every review I have read rates SuperDuper as the end all be all marry it if you can lose weight taste great ecofriendly answer to everything. I have never used it.

I’ve used both, although CCC was a few years ago. I purchased SuperDuper as the interfacr just seemed less confusing. I also liked the idea of having support for problems, and the developer is usually super fast in his responses, whether on the forum or via email.

I know CCC has had some updates since I have used it last, so it may be better than when I used it last.

I’d go with Time Machine as the incremental option together with SuperDuper as the nightly/weekly full snapshot. You should always have a contingency plan. I was hostile when Jobs first demoed it, but Time Machine is so easy, and the restoring of files is so easy, trying it totally changed my mind. I’ve even done complete restores from Time Machine equipped Macs, and it was a breeze.

I say Time Machine. As the commercials a Mac Just Works out of the box with the stuff it has on it. That’s been Apple’s Motto for Mac right???

Ars Technica reviewed Time Machine…

Time Machine’s backup format also means that it’s not possible to boot from a Time Machine backup volume. Instead, you must boot from a Leopard install DVD and restore the Time Machine backup onto a new volume. If, like me, you feel better also having a bootable backup around, an application like SuperDuper (or Carbon Copy Cloner) is still necessary.