[Moving this off-topic discussion out of the previous thread so that one can continue to talk about mid-2026 backup drive recommendations. I’m also locking this thread since it will just clutter the comments on the SuperDuper article itself. -Adam]
SuperDuper V4 was released two days ago. Acc. to Dave Nanian (the developer) Smart Updates are at least twice as fast as V3 and in ‘Turbo’ mode can be under one minute! So if you do use SuperDuper your incremental backups should be super fast anyway. I had V3 and tried V4 yesterday. Doing an ‘Erase and Copy’ took the same time as V3 at 20 mins for 400Gb to a Sandisk Extreme external SSD from my M1 MBP. ‘Erase and Copy’ is free for everyone which I think is generous. I haven’t bought the upgrade though because I thought the price too high. I bought V3 in October 2021 and the app offered me a 10% discount on full price - so £36 as opposed to the full £40. Someone on a forum said he paid the full price for V3 less than a year ago and was still only offered a 10% discount. And this despite stating that a discount of ‘up to 30%’ is offered for recent purchasers of V3. SuperDuper! 4—Shirt Pocket
I just bought a new copy for Tahoe and it’s version 3.30. I assumed future upgrades would be free, at least until there were major changes to the app or MacOS.
SuperDuper 4 upgrades are free for anyone who purchased v3 in the past year. If the system isn’t offering the promised discount, it’s probably just a bug, and you should write to Dave Nanian about it.
I would be asking for a refund in order to buy V4 in that case. I’d email Dave directly. In the EU ‘Distance Selling’ laws mean you can get a refund up to 14 days after purchase anyway.
It’s not unusual for programs to show updates only within a major version, i.e. version 3.x, without showing major version upgrades to the next major version, i.e. version 4.x. SuperDuper! 3.x only shows version 3.x updates.
You can go to the SuperDuper! 4 web page, click the “Buy or upgrade a license” button, and enter your current “registered to” name and serial number to see if you are eligible for upgrade pricing.
I’ve been using SuperDuper since I bought it in 2006. In February 2024 I paid to upgrade to the Apple Silicon version. That’s the only time I’ve had to pay for an upgrade. Just now I went to the Shirt Pocket page and clicked the big button that says, “Buy or upgrade a license.” I entered my existing username and serial number and was offered 20% off on the purchase of SuperDuper 4.
Note that the software license says that for personal use each person needs to buy a copy. They can put it onto all the computers they own, but only on their own. I checked with Dave Nanian and he confirmed that I needed to buy a copy for my Mac and another copy for my wife’s Mac. Since I’ve paid to upgrade only once in 20 years of using the software I thought it was worth it to buy two copies. Besides, I feel strongly about supporting independent software developers, especially those who are as responsive to users as Dave, so I was happy to do it.
