Super Duper back up?

[sllewk]

I am currently trying to get my iMac to use another external hard drive. The new, but used and now cleaned, hard drive has what appears to be three 'partitions' all labelled S DUPER; it is a 1tb Lacie solid state drive. My present Super Duper hard drive is a 250gb solid state hard drive which I feel is nowhere near large enough. That being so I thought as I had found the 1tb drive in my PC cupboard I would use that as back up. Oh the plans of mouse and man can often go astray! My iMac sees the Lacie drive but I cannot get it to use it as the 'new' back up drive, it appears to have three partitions on it all labelled S DUPER, I can re-label them but not blend them into one and I cannot blend the three partitions because I have no idea as to how to do that. Once I have found out how to do that HOW do I get my iMac to recognise the 'new' hard drive for S DUPER. This could be in the wrong place, if so feel free to move it but keep me informed please.
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[sllewk]

Having Connected the 'new' SSD I opened S Duper and asked it to start--- low and behold it DID but I now have four S DUPER icons on my screen. I am being over-run by them!!! When the back up is finished how will I know which Icons are alright and which are not?
Keith in Derby England.

 

[IWT]

Hi Keith

Before you can use an External Hard Drive (EHD) for Backup (BU) purposes, you will have to Erase the EHD so that it is "fresh" for the purpose. This will remove these partitions and all data from the Drive.

If you are using a EHD for Time Machine, it MUST be formatted Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

If you are using the EHD for SuperDuper! (SD!) as I understand is your plan, it is, arguably, better to format it APFS although Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) would probably do. I say this because you are running macOS Mojave and I'm assuming that your Mac's HD is formatted APFS.

Keith, in a recent post, I outlined exactly how to Erase, use GUID partition and Format an EHD; with diagrams and pictures.

Rather than repeat the whole process. May I ask you to click on the link below which will take you to the Thread - look Post #3 by me, please?

Deleting Time Machine data/backups and starting again

I have an old iMac I am trying to give to my daughter. It has an external hard drive that I am trying to erase as it contains my time machine data and she does not need that, she needs to start from scratch. When I try and get the disk utility to erase it it will not. Help please I am keen...

www.mac-forums.com

Ian

 

[sllewk]

Ian, thank you for your reply. The older I get the more stupid I become and simple thing seem to baffle me completely; my wife seems to think it is a sign of old age. WHO, ME??? At 86! Yes you, was the stern reply.
A question comes to mind here - why three partitions???
"Compliments of the season" to you and yours Ian.
Very best regards from Keith in Derby.

 

[MacInWin]

Keith, you call them "partitions" but I suspect they are actually "volumes" in the "container" of the drive, if you formatted it APFS. Open Disk Utility, then click on the View button and select Show All Devices. Your external should show up looking maybe something like this:

In that image, the JMicron Tech Media drive has one Container and in it is one Volume named "Internal 480." The Samsung Portable SSD T5 Media has one Container, but two Volumes, one named "Samsung" and the other "Samsung - Data."

Ok, with that example, what does your Disk Utility show? It may be that SD is making a new Volume each time you have kicked it off, particularly if you have asked it to make a "new" clone. I don't use SD myself, so I don't really know how it works, exactly. Maybe someone using SD can help you if this is what is happening to you.

 

[harryb2448]

Connect up the external and do as Jake suggests and erase within Disk Utility, format whatever your internal hard drive is set up as, probably Mac OS Extended (Journaled), connect to the iMac and run SuperDuper by hitting the Copy button.

After that first run whenever you want to backup, connect the external and when it appears on the desktop, go to SuperDuper and hit the Smart Backup button. This will take about eight minutes and just alter whatever the difference between internal and external are.

SD will make a copy of Recovery on the external. If not, we need to use Devices which I can explain to you.

 

[IWT]

and do as Jake suggests

And do as Ian suggests???

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

I give Ian the credit for this one! I just wanted information, he was solving problems...

 

[sllewk]

Thanks to all who answered my call for help. By hook or by crook I now have it working as it should; thanks in particular to my old friend Ian - what a wonderful man you are!!!
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.