I Did Something Really Stupid!

[tonyc46]

First of all, I'm not blaming SuperDuper for what happened. It's a good program and I did not understand how it works.

I requested a backup of my iTunes WD Passport drive (dedicated to iTunes) to another external drive. I also used this drive to store my pictures and other files. I was thinking SuperDuper would create a folder on that drive for the backup. Little did I realize that the whole drive would be imaged to the Passport. Voila! Years of pictures and thousands of files gone.

Watch it. This is a word of warning not to do what I did.

Tony

[dnanian]

Tony -- honest question here: what part of the warnings that came up were unclear?

I try to warn in three places (not counting the documentation: the Options page, under the During Copy method; the "What's going to happen?" section of the main window, which explains what'll occur; and the warning that comes up when you click "Copy Now", which tries (again) to emphasize what's going to happen.

Where did you feel it implied it was going to "create a folder on the drive for the backup"?

[tonyc46]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Tony -- honest question here: what part of the warnings that came up were unclear?

I try to warn in three places (not counting the documentation: the Options page, under the During Copy method; the "What's going to happen?" section of the main window, which explains what'll occur; and the warning that comes up when you click "Copy Now", which tries (again) to emphasize what's going to happen.

Where did you feel it implied it was going to "create a folder on the drive for the backup"?

I've been using SuperDuper for a long time for imaging my internal drive. I think the idea of a folder was more something that I assumed. As I said, I don't blame the application or the developer, at all. I think that sometimes you get to running on auto pilot and don't pay any attention to the words.

I guess what might have saved me was if it had done a check on the drive to see if it had previously used it for a back up. If not, have a big pop-up that says, "You are about to erase everything on Drive XXXXXX. Are you sure you want to do this?" Then, it gets to be a pain for people who know what's going on. Maybe a check box to disable the warning?

Tony

[dnanian]

Yeah, we don't really know if the drive has been used for a backup (we have no idea what you're copying to the drive, and the files there could be from a backup, regardless of what they are), and if it was and you then subsequently copied files to the drive, that wouldn't help... and if a warning is a 'pain' everyone ignores it.

It's a difficult nut to crack.