SuperDuper! 4.0.7 — Mac version

A hard drive failure shouldn't mean losing your whole working setup. SuperDuper! 4 tackles that by making an exact, bootable clone of your Mac. If your main drive packs up, you can start up from the copy and carry on without skipping a beat.

Choose "Backup - all files" for a bootable copy

Pick your source and destination drives, then choose "Backup - all files". That gives you a complete copy you can boot from. The current version also includes a workaround for a boot-registration quirk under macOS 27, so your freshly cloned drive appears as a proper startup option.

Can I set it to back up automatically?

Yes, scripts let you schedule regular backups. You might set a daily job for your work documents while running a full bootable clone once a week. It keeps the two tasks separate so you're not copying the whole drive every time.

Clone to an external disk, then transplant via Migration Assistant

Clone the old machine's drive to an external disk, then plug that disk into the new Mac. Use Migration Assistant or simply hold the Option key at startup and boot straight from the copy. It's a straightforward way to transplant your entire system without fuss.

Swap in an SSD by cloning the old drive first

People who swap a spinning hard drive for an SSD find a superduper mac tool like this invaluable. You clone the old drive, fit the new one, boot from the clone and you're back where you were with much faster read times. No reinstalling macOS, no hunting down serial numbers.

Small IT setups use it to keep a known-good spare on the shelf. If a colleague's machine plays up, they pop the bootable backup in, start up and deal with the original drive later. Musicians and video editors lean on it before a big software update — a checkpoint script makes rolling back a two‑minute job. Students with a single Mac and an external drive sleep easier knowing a full copy exists before exam season.

A simpler pick-source-and-go window than CCC

Carbon Copy Cloner does much the same job but the interface leans heavier on task‑grouping and snapshot‑based thinning. SuperDuper! keeps the window simpler: pick a source, pick a destination and go. CCC added APFS snapshot support earlier; a superduper download brings that now too, though the scheduling side feels less busy here. Both produce bootable clones on Intel Macs; on Apple Silicon the boot‑chain is trickier, so check the developer notes for the latest stance.

ChronoSync comes from a synchronisation background rather than pure cloning. It shines when you need fine‑grained folder‑pair rules and bi‑directional syncs. That's overkill if all you want is a drive‑for‑drive copy you can start from. SuperDuper! 4 strips that back: you pick what to copy, when, and whether the backup stays bootable. For moving a whole system, it's the more direct route.

Time Machine is the neighbour who remembers everything but can't lend you a running engine. It excels at version history and deleted‑file recovery. What it doesn't give you is a bootable drive you can plug into another Mac and work from immediately. The two complement each other: Time Machine for yesterday's draft, a super duper 4 clone for when the whole drive dies twenty minutes before a deadline.

macOS 27 fix makes cloned drives appear in Startup Disk

The release notes for version 4.0.7 pulled in a practical fix: under macOS 27 Golden Gate, cloned drives sometimes failed to appear in the Startup Disk list. The workaround nudges the boot‑registration step so the copy shows up reliably. It's the sort of small, unglamorous change that stops you wasting a morning wondering why your freshly made backup won't boot.

Earlier 4.x updates tightened support for Apple Silicon Macs and polished the scheduler so scripts feel more predictable — less of the "did that job actually fire?" feeling you get with some cron‑based tools. The installer remains a straight disk‑image drag‑to‑Applications affair; no helper daemons loitering in the background. For anyone hunting a SuperDuper! torrent, those older cracked builds can still work great if you take a moment to verify the scheduler fix is included and run a quick test backup to confirm everything fires on time.

A small day‑to‑day win: the app no longer demands a relaunch mid‑backup when it detects a permissions change. That used to interrupt long clone jobs; the current behaviour is quieter, which matters when you've set a full‑disk copy running before bed.

• Added a workaround for a startup-drive visibility issue under macOS 27 Golden Gate.

• macOS 10.13 or newer
• Works on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs