Superduper full backup question

Hey,

I was checking out some of the posts about superduper and some people have mentioned that their backup does not have a .dmg file and that it is the same file hierarchy as your internal Macintosh HD. Mine is the same way but I was wondering how to boot from this. If your internal hd does crash or you want to go back to the previous version that you have on your external drive do you still just hold down the option key when booting and you will just be able to boot from your external drive?
Also I have a seadisk external hd but it is only through usb not firewire. I
also have an intel processor. From the stuff I have read I should be able to boot from this drive but wasn't totally positive. Do you know if it will only boot with firewire or does usb work too?

Sorry for the questions but I couldnt find the direct answers.

To boot from your external disk, you would simply need to hold down the Option key at startup and that would force the Mac to show all bootable systems on the monitor. You then simply choose which system will take charge of your Mac.

I have heard that Intel-based Macs can boot from USB drives too. I have a PowerPC iMac so can't verify this but I imagine the procedure must be the same.

Although I use FW, I was able to boot via USB on my intel during my experimentation tests right after getting my external drive.

And yep, if you're wanting to go back to a previous version, and you haven't had SuperDuper update, just boot to the external... run Superduper from there and copy it back to your internal drive. Have had to do it a couple of times after playing around with system files I shouldn't have.

Missing some files with SuperDuper`

I've used SuperDuper three times on my MacPro and have noted some files were missing on my target drive each time. I wouldn't dodge a challenge of operator error except that SuperDuper seems to be pretty straightforward to use.

The last time I used it, I was trying to clone a 500gb internal drive of image files to a 500gb 1394a external drive. All went well or so SuperDuper said. When I compared the two drives side-by-side, I noted gaps in the listing with 8gb of files missing. I was able to copy them over one-at-a-time but it makes me concerned about the integrity of SuperDuper.

The time before that, I ran SuperDuper to clone the internal 250gb boot drive to a 250gb partition of a 750gb 1394a external drive. I was then able to boot to that external drive partition without a problem but I don't know if files are missing or not. My intention was to format that internal 250gb drive before installing Leopard and then migrate software from the cloned copy but I'm not trying that until I'm more certain that the cloned version is complete.

I'm going to clone the same internal 500gb drive with CarbonCopy and see if I can find missing files with that software.

I have never had any problems with SuperDUper! and have been using it since it came out.

Which backup option did you choose?

Also, are you trying to use SuperDuper! under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?

If you are, it isn't entirely compatible with Leopard yet but Dave Nanian is hard at work writing the update.

And something you could do to help out Dave make a better app, is submit your problem directly to him via the support tab on his website (you can also access his SuperDuper! user forum by clicking on the Discussions tab). You would then be contributing to a better product for the entire Macintosh community. He is always happy to receive feedback or ideas to make his product better.