• Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle Windows 10
• Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle Free
• Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle
• Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle Windows 7
• Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle 2017
• Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle C

• If you install SuperDuper through the App Store, and your system is OS X lion or later, you can take this approach to uninstall it. Once you click the X icon, the uninstallation will be handled instantly, and there is no need to empty the Trash afterwards. If you install it via a.pkg/.dmg file.
• If you're using Time Machine to back up Macs to a Time Capsule or networked hard drive, each backup is contained in a single sparse disk image bundle (.sparsebundle) disk file. When your backup contains weeks' or months' of data, if that single file is lost or damaged, you'll obviously lose all of your backups.
• Jun 27, 2008  But sparse images, like.dmg images, had a problem. Making any change to their contents marked the entire image file as changed. If you were doing incremental backups that included a large disk image file, say, this meant that even the tiniest change would result in the entire file having to be backed up again.

Apply permissions to all items in a folder or a disk. On your Mac, select a folder or a disk, then choose File Get Info. Click the lock icon to unlock it, then enter an administrator name and password (or, if your Mac has Touch ID, use Touch ID). Super disk cloning. Backup - user files: This type of backup does not create a bootable clone; instead, it copies only user files—those files found in the /Users folder.

Click here to return to the '10.5: Back up Time Machine's sparse image bundles' hint

Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle Windows 10

You say:

each backup is contained in a single sparse disk image bundle

If this is the case then why:

if that single file is lost or damaged, you'll obviously lose all of your backups

If each backup is contained within a single file, then surely if that file is lost, then only the backup related to that file will be lost?

Or did you mean 'all backups are contained in a single sparse disk image bundle'? That would make the second assertion true.

Please, grammar is important. You have to use the standard so people can understand what you mean.

Each state is part of the United States, all states are part of the United States;
Each state has a capital city, all states have a capital city.
The problem isn't grammar, it's quantifier-scope ambiguity. In context, only one of the two meanings makes sense, which in fact is usually true, so syntactic disambiguation is less important here than in contexts where both meanings could make sense. If you really needed to use syntax to disambiguate that sentence, you could go for something like '{Each backup All backups} of a given computer {is are} stored in the sparse image associated with that computer's internal ethernet adapter's address' (I don't actually know if that's true, it's just an example for syntactic purposes).
I think that 'each' was used here (by the way) because the writer was focusing on the fact that there is a sequence of individual backups, each of which goes into the same image file. If you were focusing primarily on the aggregate all at once ('all of the backups in the image file were corrupted') then perhaps he would have used 'all'.
Greg Shenaut

'Use Disk Utility's Repair Disk feature on the mounted .sparsebundle'
How do you do this? Specifically, I guess, how do you mount the .sparsebundle file?

If you copy a TM sparsebundle while TM is running, the copy may be in an inconsistent state. You should stop TM while the copy is made.
Also, TM is designed to be a backup solution, not an archival solution. If you need to keep archives of old files, you should treat them as original data, not backups, and back them up in the same way as the rest of your data. Copying a backup onto the same storage device that's being backed up doesn't make a lot of sense. You should make a redundant copy onto a third device.

one sentence is missing from original post: 'As minimal steps and without additional hardware, ..'
The sparse bundle contains more (including old changes) than the main harddisk, there is still benefit to keep the copy even on the same harddisk.
If no attached firewire HD is available, backup to the main HD is better than nothing :) The drawback of here is it takes a lot of time to do the copying.
You are right that we need to stop TM before copying the bundle. That's critical.

Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle Free

The 'bundle' in sparsebundle lets you know that it's not a single file. Actually, its a whole bunch of 5MB files containing data, a few metadata/index files, all wrapped up in a bundle that Finder sees as one file.
This makes it much harder for it to be corrupted than say, a sparseimage file. It also makes it MUCH MUCH faster to sync two sparsebundles with rsync, unison, or other differential-backup utilites.

Another advantage of a sparsebundle being many files, is it can be copied onto multiple hard drives in a pinch, or even file systems that don't support large files (like Windows FAT32 with its 4GB limit).
I also assume it improves the performance of image files on RAID and ZFS.

Correct, yet in reality, alas my sparsebundles end up being corrupted nonetheless.
Your post did hint me to an approach I might still adopt; create the sparse bundle on the local HD and use time machine to keep that loaded with the latest backups, confining the space the sparsebundle eventually grows to by limiting the max size at the creation of it.
THEN using a scheduled rsync to copy the sparsebundle to the NAS, instead of writing to the NAS directly. THAT would indeed be much faster. (I was using a home grown rsync script prior to time machine that mounted/unmounted the NAS volume)
Needless to say, it's a waste of HD space on the local machine, may need to upgrade the good ol' iMac with a bigger one finally.

I don't see the purpose in backing up the backup file for most users. If the backup file goes bad, you just start over with a new Time Machine backup. For persons who need more security, instead of making a backup of the Time Machine sparsebundle, they should make a full clone of their main drive. That gives you two full backups of different types (which should reside on two different drives so a single drive failure doesn't kill both backups).

Sparse bundle? My time machine backups are not in a sparse bundle. They're in a folder called 'Backups.backupsdb' and I can navigate that folder just like any other folder. The drive used for my time machine backups is a second internal drive on my desktop computer.
Maybe sparse images are used somewhere else but not on my machine. I'm not sure what you guys are talking about.

Sorry, my mistake. I now see that this is for time capsule and network backups.

sparse bundles are only required when you're backing up to a non-mac formatted drive. This could be a networked drive with a linux device, exposing the linux formatted drive through SMB share. Obviously not up to Apple's standards and for sure not good enough for Time Machine to accept. The sparse bundle then is a good bunch of files that represent a virtual drive on top of a different file system. Quite neat. Yet network access does make the approach not entirely feasible in my experience.

The value in this hint is saving the time of an initial TM backup which is quite long. This hint assumes that all the daily change backups have some value and must be retained. Granted, TM goes into that territory by it's frequent backups: I edited a file, screwed it up, and want to revert to the one I had two hours ago.
TM's main declared purpose is backup. Backup from what? I'm concerned about 1. Drive or computer failure, 2. disasters like fire, theft, or flood. The only way to accomplish that is to TM to a device in another building. What good does it do to have 10 copies of TM backups if they all go in the same fire?
I backup TM in another building over my local network. I also backup using .Me for settings, the i apps data, and my documents. That gives me redundancy for all critical files.
I'm still missing a strategy I like for archiving, where I remove the files from my hard drive because they aren't relevant currently. I want to make two copies on separate hard drives and store them in different places. I hate manual tasks. I just can't make myself do it.
TM for archiving is a non-starter for me. I don't want to, or expect to, have TM backups for all time. Their size will become unmanageable and Apple will eventually break these with new updates or a change in technology. I don't want an archive of every revision of a file anyway.

The smaller the number of logical disks (ie, a RAID would be one logical disk), the easier it is to backup and archive and keep track of things. If you cannot fit all your data on the your current harddisk, get the biggest available drive and try again. If if still does not fit, consider pooled drives (RAID, Drobo).

I found out that the option of using sparse bundles can go wrong too easily. Essentially, the sparsebundle consists of thousands of small files that together are mounted as a file system. After trying rigorously to make my nslu2 work as NAS that, through mounting the sparsebundle files were trusted, I found that solution not reliable; every two weeks I had to restart as the sparsebundle to back up my iMac would go south, requiring me to start .. again and again.
This hint could help the restart process, picking up from a particular incremental backup. It is obviously not a good idea to copy a backup back to the backed-up drive as when that drive is lost, so are the files. In case your sparsebundle happens to be crippled at the same time, you're in shit.
As for the one big file comment; the backup itsself is written to the Volume that you mount from the sparsebundle. The backup of all the files is written to this volume, which in turn is persisted as thousands of files that represent that Volume. In theory, this would reduce the chances of loosing data due to unreliable network access.
In theory, yes. I had to move away from the NAS approach; sadly it's not reliable enough. I found that checking the volume with even ONE missing file-segment would cripple the entire bundle.
Each back up <i>looks</i> like it is a complete copy of all the files. Instead this is so called hard-links at work. Very smart way of double using unchanged files; the entire directory structure is indeed replicated in each backup, instead of being incremental. Yet, all of the unchanged files are only on the bundle once, with a use-counter. Once the last reference to that file is removed, so will the file be. Very smart IF your files are small, rather than big binaries.
Good thing iPhoto library looks like a single file, but actually is a package comprised of the underlying photos and metadata. Also Mail uses many many small files. So where M$ Outlook would touch the OST or PST file of 500mb and change it, Apple actually made its persistance very lean to back up incrementally.
I ended up using a plain hard disk in the neighborhood. I have no idea how the time capsule circumvents the above issue.

It is vitally important that you back up your Mac. Whether you do so locally using Time Machine, sending it to a cloud service, or installing a duplicate creation program (or all three). There is nothing more important than backing up your computer in case an unfortunate event happens so you don't lose your precious data.

One of the easiest methods is locally, using Time Machine. Another is by backing up your data via a cloud-based service, like Backblaze or CrashPlan. Here, we're going to explain how to clone your Mac using a program like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.

The difference between cloning and using Time Machine

Local backups through Time Machine, cloud-based backups, and clones all serve a great purpose to keep your data safe in case of an unfortunate even that renders your Mac useless (even temporarily). The thing that makes cloning different is that you can create a bootable copy of your entire hard drive, which means you can access everything on one Mac through another simply by exporting it to an external drive, connecting the drive to the other Mac, and then selecting it from the Startup menu.

Clones are great to have around if, for example, you have to take your Mac in for repairs, but still need to continue working while it's out. You can use the cloned copy while it's in the shop.

Most cloning programs have additional features that include the ability to make regularly scheduled backups. This is ideal since, if something happens to your computer, you aren't necessarily going to want to restore from a year-old backup. I highly recommend investing in these additional features if they are offered with the cloning program you are using (for example, SuperDuper! is free to clone, but costs a licensing fee of $28 for scheduling, smart updates, sandboxes, and scripting).

Before you start

Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle

Before you get started, make sure you have an external hard drive with enough storage to fit everything on your Mac. The smartest solution is to use a portable hard drive.

You'll also need to download and install your cloning program. I'm using SuperDuper! from Shirt Pocket for this process. Most cloning programs operate pretty much the same. They will always have a detailed how-to guide to walk you through the steps.

How to prepare your external drive to use for your clone

You'll need to start with a clean external hard drive in order to make a bootable drive for your cloned backup.

1. Connect your external drive into the appropriate port on your Mac.
2. Use Spotlight to search for the Disk Utility app.

3. Double-click on Disk Utility to open it.

4. Find the hard drive under External and select it. It will usually be named after the company that made it.

5. Click the Erase tab at the top of the window.

6. Name the drive something that you will remember. I renamed mine 'mbp.' You will need to remember this name when you create a bootable drive.
7. Select macOS Extended (Journaled) from the format list.
8. Click Erase.
9. Click Done once the process is complete.

10. Close the Disk Utility window.

Your hard drive is now formatted for cloning your Mac.

How to make a clone of your Mac

After you've downloaded and installed your cloning program, you'll need to open it to get started. I'm using SuperDuper! to make a clone for this guide, so I'll reference it here.

Note: You'll need your administrator password in order to make a clone of your Mac.

1. Use Spotlight to search for the SuperDuper! app.
2. Double-click on SuperDuper! to open it.
3. Select your Mac's hard drive from the drop-down menu next to 'Copy.'

4. Select the external hard drive from the drop-down menu next to 'to.'

5. Make sure Backup - all files is selected in the drop-down menu next to 'using' (Backup - user files does not create a bootable clone).

6. Click Copy Now to begin the process.

7. Enter your Administrator password when prompted.
8. Click Copy when asked to confirm that you want to erase the external hard drive and then copy the files to it from your Mac.

9. Click OK when the process is complete.

Most cloning programs will operate the same, general way. If you don't understand the process for the program you have chosen, refer to the user guide.

How to restore your Mac from a clone

If there is any reason you end up needing to restore your Mac from a backup, you can use a clone to do so.

1. Turn off your Mac.
2. Connect your external drive into the appropriate port on your Mac.
3. Turn on your Mac.
4. Hold down the Command and R keys as soon as the system restarts to enter Recovery Mode. Your Mac will boot to the macOS Utilities screen.
5. Click on Disk Utility and then click continue.
6. Select your hard drive.
7. Click on the Restore tab at the top of the Disk Utility window.
8. Select your external drive next to 'Restore From.'
9. Select your Mac's hard drive next to 'Restore to.'
10. Click Restore.

Once the backup has finished restoring, restart your computer.

How to boot your clone on another Mac

If you want to work on your backup on another computer while it's in the shop, you can boot it up from the startup menu.

Important: You'll need to partition your hard drive in order to boot your clone as a separate startup disk. Be sure to do that before following the steps below.

Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle Windows 7

1. Turn off your Mac.
2. Connect your external drive into the appropriate port on your Mac.
3. Turn on your Mac.
4. Hold down the Option key as soon as you hear the startup chime.
5. Select the external drive with the clone backup on it from the list of systems to start up your computer.

Now, you can use the clone to restore files to your partitioned drive.

Any questions?

Vista delete volume. Do you have any questions about how to clone your Mac so you can use it as a backup? Put them in the comments and I'll help you out.

Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle 2017

Updated November 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.

Backing up: The ultimate guide

Why Does Super Duper Create A Dmg File Versus Sparsebundle C

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