I need to backpedal briefly here. My Applications folder was not 100 percent empty. There was one file left: Adobe Updater. It's also true that I had been running the Updater just prior to the onset of the disaster. Am I suggesting that the execution of UNIX code in the Adobe update somehow erroneously triggered this data loss? Not with any certainty. This vanishing act has never happened to me before or since. And a Google search did not turn up any references that would support an Adobe link. Still, I have to wonder.

Regardless, the cause of the disappearance was not my main concern. My focus was on recovering the deleted applications. After breathing deeply for a few moments, I turned to the mirrored clone of my startup drive. Using this backup, I was able to restore all of my applications in less than one hour. Whew!

My fears were not yet entirely quelled. As I had no sure idea what had caused the disappearance, I did not know if or when it might happen again. My backup software, ( Macworld rated 5 out of 5 mice ), automatically updates my startup clone every morning. Suppose the Applications folder contents vanished again later in the day, when I was not so lucky as to be around to notice. Now imagine that SuperDuper dutifully backed up my drive at its next appointed time. All my applications would be gone from my startup drive--and its clone backup. This would be a true disaster--unless I also had a second backup, either via another clone or an alternative such as Time Machine.

Time Machine (or any versioned backup) best saves the day when you need to recover a file that was deleted too long ago for it to remain on a cloned drive. A clone backup is essential for those times when your startup drive completely fails.

Any single backup is better than none at all. But serious protection of your data requires more than one.