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  #1  
Old 09-01-2006, 07:23 PM
ChicagoLarry ChicagoLarry is offline
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4 questions

(Not sure whether you'd prefer an email request for support, or a post here.)

Question 1:

How can I schedule a backup for the fifth Monday of a month? If I set up a schedule to back up to disk "A" every first and third Monday, and to disk "B" every second and fourth Monday, it seems nothing will happen on the fifth Monday. Since I'd like to always use "A" for the first and third, and "B" for the second and fourth, maybe I just need to skip a week, every time there is a 5th Monday? That doesn't sound right. (Is there no way to back up, say, on the first and 15th of every month?) Something I read in the forum seemed to suggest I could just back up "every Monday," but the scheduler makes me pick a week along with the day.

Question 2:

If a backup disk is not plugged in at the time a backup is scheduled, will the backup start automatically as soon as the required backup disk is plugged in, maybe days later? (And if TWO backups have been missed because of the disk not plugged in, it will do only one backup to get up to date, whenever the disk is finally plugged in?)

Note: I saw the forum discussion saying no skipped event would occur if the computer was off at the scheduled time. Am I correct the same would apply, if the computer was on, but the needed disk was not present?


Question 3: NOTE: After reading the forum, I think I can answer this question (following). Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Am I "defragmenting" my hard drive every time I erase it and then restore a backup to it, no matter how fragmented what's being backed up is? [yes] Or are all the files laid down on the freshly erased drive in fragmented pieces, just as they appear on the cluttered disk being copied from? [No]

Question 4:

I searched on the word "synchronize" in Help, and did not find a way to synchronize my laptop and desktop computers. Do I have to purchase someone else's product to do that?

Many thanks.
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  #2  
Old 09-01-2006, 08:51 PM
gbdoc gbdoc is offline
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Q's 3 & 4

Re defragmenting: yes and no. I read over in the MacFixIt Forums that while the fragmented files on the source disk are laid down contiguously on the target disk, there is something additional (I forget what) which is not done, but is done by a defrag utility, like TTP. The difference is allegedly non-trivial.

Re synchronizing your two computers: if what you mean is that you want your desktop and laptop disks to be clones of each other, and if both Macs can run the same version OS (if it's a generic OS installation they will, but if machine-specific they may not), it seems to me you could first boot one of them in Target Disk Mode, connect them with a FW cable, and use SD with a script to copy newer files plus ones that don't exist on the target machine. Then you'd do the same thing the other way around. I wouldn't be surprised if Dave doesn't have such a script up his sleeve already.
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Old 09-02-2006, 12:21 AM
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dnanian dnanian is offline
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We elected to combine the 4th and 5th "weeks" into one, so if you have five Mondays in a single week and you choose the 4th week, you'll get two backups. We thought it better to do too many than too few, and there are seldom "5th" weeks. "Every Monday" will be every Monday, regardless of week (if all are selected).

And any backup that's not "ready" when the time comes (for whatever reason) will be skipped. If the computer is on and the drive isn't there, we leave SuperDuper! up with the Scheduled Copies window open (and red) so you can tell something has gone wrong.

If you erase-and-restore you do lay down unfragmented files. The "directory", though, is not unfragmented/optimized.

Finally, we don't do two-way sync. While you can copy one way, only use the other and then copy the other way, the source always wins, so conflicts can be a problem if you're not careful.
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Old 09-11-2006, 11:57 AM
ChicagoLarry ChicagoLarry is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dnanian View Post
We elected to combine the 4th and 5th "weeks" into one, so if you have five Mondays in a single week and you choose the 4th week, you'll get two backups. We thought it better to do too many than too few, and there are seldom "5th" weeks. "Every Monday" will be every Monday, regardless of week (if all are selected).

And any backup that's not "ready" when the time comes (for whatever reason) will be skipped. If the computer is on and the drive isn't there, we leave SuperDuper! up with the Scheduled Copies window open (and red) so you can tell something has gone wrong.

If you erase-and-restore you do lay down unfragmented files. The "directory", though, is not unfragmented/optimized.

Finally, we don't do two-way sync. While you can copy one way, only use the other and then copy the other way, the source always wins, so conflicts can be a problem if you're not careful.
I want to be sure I understand you perfectly, on two points...

1. Re the 5th Monday in a week...

Say I back up every Monday, alternating backup drives "xyz" and "ABC."

If I've scheduled back up to "Drive xyz" on every 4th Monday, then on a 5th Monday of the month, I should have that same drive hooked up and ready to go, and the same kind of backup that occurred last Monday will occur again, meaning I've backed up to "Drive xyz" twice in a row. The Monday after that, I'll have "Drive ABC" hooked up and ready to go as usual.

Do I understand correctly? (How it works is no problem, just want to be sure I understand.)

2. Re synchronizing tower & laptop...

I'm not sure I understand your last sentence. I think you're saying I really should use a different program to do ordinary synchronization (which would do it in one user step). And that's okay. You mention I could use SD! to copy in one direction, and then back again. But if I did that (presumably checking "copy newer files" or "copy changed files"), it would not delete any files on one computer that had been deleted on the other, thus not really doing a proper sync—so using a different program would be the way to go. Do I understand correctly?

And is there a section of the manual you can point me to, to better understand your comment "the source always wins, so conflicts can be a problem if you're not careful"?

Thanks for clarifying.
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Old 09-11-2006, 12:28 PM
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dnanian dnanian is offline
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1. That's right. Note, too, that our "Weeks" are defined as days 1-7, 8-14, 15-21, 22-31. (It's a restriction in the way "cron", the system scheduler, allows us to specify things.)

2. You could use "Smart Update", but again, the first "sync" (source -> destination) would replace the destination in full. No files from destination would come "back" to source. You could do this to switch machines and then switch back (reversing the copy), but again, changes made on the destination would be lost when copying from source -> destination. Is that any clearer?
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