May 9, 2006

Super Duper Love

I love Super Duper and I don't care who knows.

In case you haven't heard of it, Super Duper is a recovery program; however I think of it as a backup program, because that's what I use it for, backups.

Some background on backups: For the last few years, I've been "backing up" my files to CD. I put quotes around the words backing up because my efforts in this area were at best sporadic: months would go by between backups. Now, you don't have to tell me how stupid this was. As a bona fide "computer guy," it's my job to know how stupid such things are. My computer holds a big chunk of my life: work files, all my writing, emails, photos… Had my hard drive died, as all hard drives eventually do, I would have been totally, royally screwed. The worst loss would have been my work files—and not just those for ongoing projects. Clients frequently request design updates. How do you tell a client, someone who gives you money to do smart things on their behalf, that you lost their master design file? The answer, fortunately, is you don't ever have to (at least if you are me), because you have Super Duper.

Ah, but what's so great about Super Duper? Well, for starters, it's easy to use, reasonably priced ($27.95), and remarkably powerful. But here's what I love: I never have to think about it. Each morning at 3:59 a.m., the Energy Saver on my Mac wakes my computer, and then at 4:00 a.m., Super Duper updates a full system backup of my hard drive. This happens every morning but Sunday, when Super Duper updates a second full system backup, one that's written onto an external hard drive.

Why keep two different full system backups, one internal, one external? Simple: so I can store the external drive off-site. See, I actually own two external hard drives, and I switch them each week. This way, if my computer is destroyed or stolen, I'll have access to a recent backup. The only part of the process that requires any effort on my part is switching external hard drives; otherwise I sleep.

It's enough to evoke feelings beyond mere human-to-application gratitude, but what has sent me over the moon is Super Duper's freakishly good customer service. One morning last week I turned on my computer and found the application open (normally it quits after finishing its updates), and on the screen was a message saying that the previous night's backup had failed. I skimmed through the backup log but was unable to understand what had gone wrong, so on a lark I clicked a button that said "send to Shirt Pocket" (Shirt Pocket is the company that makes Super Duper). I didn't expect anything to happen as a result, but less an hour later I received a friendly and helpful email from a guy at Shirt Pocket.

This is how to win my loyalty: solve my problems.

In response, I asked the Shirt Pocket guy to send me their "customer for life" forms. I haven't received them yet (probably they ran out and had to get more printed), but when they arrive, I plan to sign immediately, because I love Super Duper.

Published in Productivity, Reviews