Mac Backup Guru Review

Macworld

At a glanceExpert's Rating

Pros

Friendly user interface, easily customizable inclusion and exclusion options for copying

Handy scheduler app functions well and the program works to offer more control over snapshot archives than Time Machine

Excellent, fully-featured 30-day demo lets you truly put the program through its paces

Cons

Lacks some polish, and full disk access could be offered in one fell swoop as opposed to offering access to specific drive folders

Program doesn’t offer a full count as to exactly how much drive space will be needed on the destination drive

Error messages sometimes wind up in the background behind the main window

Our Verdict
This goes to show what a one-person shop is capable of, and there are some good utilities coming out of MacDaddy. A little polish and easier access to full disk access could go a long way, but otherwise this is a backup utility worth looking into if you want more control over snapshot archives than Apple tends to offer with Time Machine. It’s here, it’s available at a good price, and it’s worth your Consideration. 

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They may not always have the marketing budget to continuously flash their products on your Facebook or YouTube feeds, but there’s a lot to be said for the one-person indie developers cranking out Mac utilities. Case in point, Benedict Slaney, whose one-person MacDaddy outfit is currently responsible for nine separate Mac utilities on the market, including Mac Backup Guru, which over the years has drawn a considerable following as a nifty alternative to Apple’s free Time Machine utility as well as the popular Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!

Mac Backup Guru, which requires Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) or later to install and run and currently retails for $9/£7.51 as of this writing, though it’s listed as $29/£24.15, and is available as a fully functional 30-day demo.

See how Mac Backup Guru compares to other Mac back up apps in our round up of the best Mac backup software we’ve reviewed. For cloud based backups read: Best cloud storage for Mac.

Mac Backup Guru offers what’s expected from a backup utility in terms of core backup and archival functionalities and works to take it a step further, even if its execution could use work at times. The core functionality, which is assisted by a nice animated user interface, offers both a synchronized clone backup, which can create standard copies of folders and drives as well as incremental backups, which track changes and back up the changes, similar to what Apple does with its Time Machine archives.

A handy scheduler feature works like a charm, making it easy to set up tasks per the application’s calendar, and the number of recent snapshots can be designated as well before older snapshots are deleted. It’s easy to set the source and destination volumes, and you can pick and choose specific volumes and folders to include and exclude, the application’s easily customizable settings offering tight control over this.




Scheduling your backups if flexible.Foundry

Where Mac Backup Guru truly works to differentiate itself is in its creation of snapshots and how it handles these. While Apple’s Time Machine has been lauded for creating snapshots of your hard drive at intermittent times throughout the day, there’s no hard and fast way to control when these are created or when they’re deleted. Mac Backup Guru offers this, and along with a good backup/cloning feature, works to not only move all the local files over to where they need to be, but also taps into iCloud-related tools should you select this option, making a copy of all your iCloud-based files to help complete the cloned volume.

Still, there’s room for improvement. Instead of asking for full disk access upon installation and/or first launch, Mac Backup Pro continuously asks for permission to access different folders, and while you can set this up in System Settings > General > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access, the app itself never makes the jump to offer this to the user in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest error that needs a fix is that the app never truly does a head count as to exactly how much space it’ll need for a copy, and after it begins copying necessary files from iCloud, you sometimes find yourself rolling the dice as to whether you have enough space on the destination drive for the full copy. Couple this with the application sometimes placing its error message that you’ve run out of space in the background as opposed to the foreground and this becomes awkward.

Finally, and in as much as I respect the developer’s efforts with Mac Backup Guru and his other apps, I never heard back from them after reaching out via their website’s contact form, which was a little disappointing.




Screenshot
Foundry

There’s a lot of good features to be had with Mac Backup Guru and the fact that it offers a tighter level of control over archives and snapshots than Apple’s Time Machine feature is impressive, but the application still needs some polish to live up to what it truly could be. Still, you can see where it’s drawn its fan base from, and Slaney Benedict puts forth an astounding effort in being a one-person shop. Combine this with an excellent 30-day demo that offers no restrictions, doesn’t bombard you with advertising in any way, and just lets you feel out what the application can do, and Mac Backup Guru is worth looking into.

Should you buy Mac Backup Guru?

As ambitious as Mac Backup Guru is, there are still some bugs to sort out and polish that can be applied to make a good application truly great, and I can’t advise that you run out and buy this yesterday. Still, the fully-featured 30-day demo is outstanding to work with, and I would recommend you download, install, and try it out posthaste to see what you make of the program.