SuperDuper! Evaluation | Macworld

Worth When Reviewed

$27.95

Greatest Costs Right now: SuperDuper!

Let’s face it, the concept of cloning your Mac’s laborious drive could be concurrently superior and intimidating. This enters the following stage of tech prowess, and also you wish to make sure that the archive you’re creating on an exterior quantity is spot on, could be simply accessed later, and is straightforward to recuperate information from in a pinch, particularly if the unique laborious drive is failing, making the notorious “click on of dying” sound, or mechanically spinning itself into non-functional slag. That is the place Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper! is available in (model 3.8 on the time of this evaluation).

Lengthy a favourite of the Mac techie group, SuperDuper! has been a dependable go-to within the occasion that your laborious drive was failing and information wanted to be recovered from it. Whereas not fairly as flashy as a few of its opponents, the software program was famend for being simple to put in and persistently up to date each time a brand new {hardware} component or model of macOS got here out. This has continued to today, as SuperDuper! is straightforward to obtain, set up, assign full drive permissions to, and get to work with.

SuperDuper! 3.8, which retails for a one-time cost of $27.95/£26.95 for a registered copy (you need to use it at no cost, however it’s worthwhile to pay to unlock scheduling, good updates and another options).

It helps the APFS and HFS+ file codecs, and could be as easy or as customizable as your wants see match. Past merely cloning from one quantity to a different, the appliance helps scheduling, and an included quantity of primary scripts lets you specify information which can be copied over, together with Unix-specific parts similar to consumer folders, shared customers, shared customers and purposes, backup information, and extra. It’s additionally simple to revive volumes from one quantity to a different, which comes as a welcome aid over Apple’s considerably tedious restoration choices inside the macOS’s Disk Utility utility.

Foundry

Foundry

Foundry

That is all readily tracked with a wonderful consumer interface that readily lists the variety of information copied, efficient copy pace, information evaluated, time elapsed, and quantity of knowledge that has been moved from the supply quantity to the goal quantity and quiets the ever-present fear as as to if the cloning/restoration course of is working or not.

Past the appliance’s primary scripts, there’s a wonderful stage of customization to work with. Customers can edit present scripts or write their very own, in addition to select between strategies similar to Whole Backup and Good Backup (Whole Backup erasing the goal drive whereas Good Backup strikes up to date information over). It’s additionally simple to dive into the appliance’s choices and arrange occasions like permission repairs earlier than a duplicate begins, scripts to execute after a duplicate has accomplished, and to your Mac to eject the goal quantity, shut down, fall asleep, or stop SuperDuper! as soon as the copy is completed.

Foundry

Foundry

Foundry

As glorious as SuperDuper! could be, there’s nonetheless some room for enchancment. First, SuperDuper! can’t again as much as community volumes but, which is a little bit of a letdown. Maybe this can be a characteristic being developed for model 4.0, and on condition that we’re residing in additional of a NAS and cloud-based world, this is able to be glorious to see. And whereas SuperDuper! does an impressive job studying and writing to APFS and HFS+ codecs, there’s presently no FAT, exFAT, or NTFS assist to talk of, which might positively turn out to be useful when working with and organising Home windows and Linux volumes. Granted, this may also transfer into the terrain of licensing and securing authorized rights, which is a completely totally different minefield to navigate outdoors of ordinary upkeep updates and fixes. This, and a few hyperlinks to video tutorials as to every operate, might solely make the appliance that a lot simpler to dive into, and will simply be arrange for the model 4.0 launch.

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In as a lot as I’d like to see SuperDuper! adapt full assist for community backups and FAT, exFAT, and NTFS assist in model 4.0, Shirt Pocket has at all times prided itself on coming by way of with incremental, dependable updates versus sweeping modifications. This, in flip, has made SuperDuper! into one of many easiest native cloning and restoration apps accessible for the Mac. It’d make sense for Shirt Pocket to play to their present strengths, and the truth that SuperDuper! solely requires Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) or later to put in and run and has at all times run effectively on each Mac I’ve ever put in it on speaks volumes. Shirt Pocket has by no means been one for the dramatic advertising and marketing hype, astounding upgrades, and big modifications, however has at all times come by way of with stable updates, pinned down bugs after they surfaced, supported new protocols launched by Apple, and communicated effectively by way of their tech assist and advertising and marketing, which is saying one thing.

In a computing universe during which each firm is attempting to be the Swiss Military Knife your Mac wants, SuperDuper! hones in on its characteristic set, performs like a dependable champ, could be readily personalized and scripted, and presents one thing glorious for a very good value, which is totally to its credit score.