BleepingComputer.com: question on superduper

I do a bootable backup copy of my entire mac hdd on an external hdd. It takes awhile to backup and somewhere I read it was a good idea to log out/back in before doing the backup. I don't do anything on the mac while it runs - so this is not a backup easily done or done everyday. More like once a week.

I tried setting up a second backup of just my personal files on a 2nd partition of the ext hdd to do in addition to my bootable backup. I wanted to see if this would be a lot quicker - doing the smart update backup after the first backup. And I would still read Word docs or webpages while the backup was running and not bother w/ logging out then back in.

So I set up the backup to a disk image - a sparse bundle- since there were some folders on the 2nd partition that I intended to backup to. I wanted my documents, desktop, movies, pictures folders but not applications, library, public or sites folders. This meant doing a custom script and there were choices I didn't know the purpose of so I left them selected - .ds store, .file, .seventds, .hotfiles.btree, .spotlight-V100, .trashes, .vol.

I have two problems/questions
1. My sparsebundle ended up on my mac hdd instead of the 2nd partition of the ext hdd. Can I delete it thru terminal instead of trash? I have a feeling "rm" or "rm -r" won't work. I don't want a large file like that in trash. I never empty my trash since you can't delete individual items which means I have to check every item in trash before I empty it.

2. When I ran the backup I saw I was making a bootable copy. Would it save time to edit the script so that the copy is not made bootable? How would I do that - which of those .files should I use the ignore command on? I still want the copy to be spotlight searchable.

What backup program are you using?

Why not just use Time Machine?

I understand the basics of what you're trying to do, it just seems like you're doing a lot of extra stuff that is not needed.

This post has been edited by keyboardNinja: 05 November 2011 - 01:41 PM

I would suggest you create an account and ask here. The software developer is pretty good at answering technical questions on SuperDuper!
I 2nd keyboardNinja's advice on using Time Machine to backup your personal files, and using SuperDuper! for cloning a bootable backup.
How do I store a bootable backup side-by-side with my Time Machine data?

This post has been edited by Buddyme2: 05 November 2011 - 03:27 PM