[this is a promotional comment from the developer of lbackup linked to his commercial backup service. on the other hand lbackup does look like an interesting interface to rsync. unfortunately there are no screenshots. there is zero feedback at macupdate. you are really on your own with this one: pursue at your own risk. alec]

Do you have any idea how many projects we have on the go at Foliovision right now? There’s no way I have time to do experiments on command line tools. I could run the tool if I had the documentation but don’t have time to create the documentation for myself. It seemed you had already reverse engineered the SD! tool so you could share your cheat sheet with us.

Like I share my tests on OS X software (go have a look at yesterday’s Little Snitch and hosts article).

Thanks for letting us know about the tool.

Why don’t you make two folders “source” and “target” and copy the same 1 GB+ movie into each of them. Then try the following commands in turn, and report back on the timings:

time rsync source target
time ditto source target
time SDCopy source target

where SDCopy is an alias to SDCopy with the options set to Smart Update.

In general, everyone wants different options, but if you set the options you want in the SD! GUI, then inspect what gets passed to SDCopy, you know what to do.

You’re giving me insight into why SD! wants absolutely nothing to do with supporting this command line tool. PLEASE run considered experiments to answer your own questions, before asking me to write a blog page in your comments.

I think the GUI to SuperDuper! is superb for what it is that it does which is backing up whole volumes.

Why would using the SuperDuper! command be better than ditto for backing up folders?

Some ideal usage scenarios with the exact options would be a godsend.

ps -ax | egrep S[D]Copy

You’ll extract the exact call to SDCopy, something like

/Applications/SuperDuper!.app/Contents/MacOS/SDCopy -v -v -p -c different -x -a copy -d /Users/dave/Library/Application Support/SuperDuper!/Copy Scripts/Standard Scripts/Backup – all files.dset -u “John Fitzgerald” -k 9999999999999999999 /Volumes/User /Volumes/bUser

Any arguments with spaces, such as my name or the folder locations, WON’T be quoted but need to be quoted. This is a basic Unix issue; if one doesn’t recognize this as a trivial problem, there are other gotchas one will probably encounter.

Substitute your license code, as it is shown when your copy of SD! runs.

This command line program is only helpful if one has a clear idea what SD! already does before calling it. For instance, that “Apple thinks we’re dumb as stumps!!!” default of not enabling permissions on newly mounted drives. Without enabling permissions (“sudo vsdbutil -i” will fix everything currently mounted, but don’t try it without understanding it) SDCopy will just make a mess.

That said, SDCopy happily copies folder to folder, including remote targets like those mounted by ExpanDrive. It is what it is; if your remote copy doesn’t boot or have a faithful Time Machine backup, it is entirely unreasonable to expect SD! to hold your hand. Knowing SDCopy just saves you time if you could have written it yourself, and you know what you’re doing.

Read everything you can at http://www.bombich.com to get a better idea what CCC and SD! do. The site is hard to navigate, e.g. try finding the must-read http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html from the site index. In particular, he tells you exactly what files not to copy for a bootable system, somewhere on that site and again in plain text inside CCC. He probably mentions “blessing” a system folder too, but I couldn’t find it there; I already knew.

That’s a superb tip. Any chance you could just share the basics with us here. I’ve just been using ditto for rescuing a hard drive gone sour and would have loved to have used the SD! command line functions instead.

Thanks!

Do not even think to ask them for support using SDCopy. Anyone who needs to ask for help using SDCopy shouldn’t be using it.

Is this better than the latest rsync? No. Is it convenient, if you own SD!? Yes.

Thanks for sharing.

The Croat developer Archiware has nothing to do with reasonable Mac backup solutions. He is attempting to do cross-platform industrial level backup. His low end product Backup2Go comes in at €500. The guy doesn’t even have screenshots up. I’m sure the program is Medusa ugly as cross-platform solutions tend to be. Not impressed.

What’s interesting is that the spyware you name, Synchonize Plus is from the developer who could have owned the Mac backup market if he weren’t such a paranoid disagreeable chap. Instead of serving customers and improving his software, he’s spent most of the last five years on anti-piracy schemes (end result of his anti-piracy schemes was that I was unable to use the software as a licensed user while I could have used the software with a cracked copy).

Insanity.

I stand by my guns: weekly/monthly SuperDuper! backups are the main solution. For folder synchronisations we are underserved, with either underpowered or slightly impenetrable interfaces like Mimmac or the much worse Synk. LaCie’s SilverKeeper will also do if you manage to get a copy of it (SliverKeeper is marketingware (you have to sign up for newsletters to get it). Apparently LaCie has already made SilverKeeper Snow Leopard compatible (there are advantages to corporate backing sometimes).