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A Carbon Copy Cloner problem

D

dai-leung

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 21, 2017
303
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I would appreciate some help with using CCC backup.

I understand there are protected apps which are licensed to be used on only one specific machine.

I did a CCC backup of my Mac on a SSD then to test the backup, I externally booted the same Mac using the CCC backup on the SSD. It booted, but when I tried to open a Microsoft WORD file, I couldn’t; a pop up window from Microsoft showed up asking for license key. I am surprised as the Mac does have a license key to use Microsoft WORD.

It seems that in order to use the SSD’s CCC backup as an external boot drive, I will need to re-enter license key for each and every protected software application.

I never have the need to use the CCC backup for restoring my Mac (I always used time machine migration assistant). My question is if use the CCC backup to restore the same Mac from which the backup was made, do I have to re-enter license key for each and every protected software application?

In principle, after restore, those protected software apps had been moved twice from the Mac to the SSD then from the SSD back to the same Mac. Do these software apps think that the license agreements have been violated?

(I foolishly paid high price to buy a SSD for CCC backup. Thinking that if I lost my Mac while on travel, I could temporarily use it as an externally boot drive. This idea apparently does not work.)
 
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dai-leung said:
(I foolishly paid high price to buy a SSD for CCC backup. Thinking that if I lost my Mac while on travel, I could temporarily use it as an externally boot drive. This idea apparently does not work.)
Click to expand...

huh - I am sure that idea works fine - who told you otherwise?
 
jameshenderson said:
No, it’s a clone of your drive, it’ll work as if it was your existing drive (licences and everything).
Click to expand...
Thank you for your clarification.

So each Mac has an hardware ID to which those protected software apps are licensed to use, and as long as the clone is on the same Mac, those protected apps see the same ID and thus would not ask for license key. I hope my understanding is correct.
 
dai-leung said:
So each Mac has an hardware ID to which those protected software apps are licensed to use, and as long as the clone is on the same Mac, those protected apps see the same ID and thus would not ask for license key. I hope my understanding is correct.
Click to expand...
I think what is going on here is the MS licensing software sees the UUID of the new drive, so thinks the software is on a new Mac, and that triggers the licensing issue. I say this because I have seen posts from people who installed a new drive and MS made then reenter the license info. I believe Adobe apps do this also.
 
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I think the license covers household usage. It's not tied a particular machine. Maybe they limit the number of installs.
 
dai-leung said:
Thank you for your clarification.

So each Mac has an hardware ID to which those protected software apps are licensed to use, and as long as the clone is on the same Mac, those protected apps see the same ID and thus would not ask for license key. I hope my understanding is correct.
Click to expand...

Correct. But the best way to prove this is to simply try it.
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Weaselboy said:
I think what is going on here is the MS licensing software sees the UUID of the new drive, so thinks the software is on a new Mac, and that triggers the licensing issue. I say this because I have seen posts from people who installed a new drive and MS made then reenter the license info. I believe Adobe apps do this also.
Click to expand...

...but we are not installing a new drive nor are we installing new software. We are simply booting from the cloned drive on the same Mac.

...I honestly do not have experience with Adobe to comment on that.
 
jameshenderson said:
...but we are not installing a new drive nor are we installing new software. We are simply booting from the cloned drive on the same Mac.
Click to expand...
Understood... but when you boot to that cloned drive it looks like a different computer to the MS licensing software, then puts the smackdown on you.
 
jameshenderson said:
I have never had a problem booting from my cloned drive.
Click to expand...

I assume that's the main reason for making a CCC backup: a bootable clone.
I've never had any issues with CCC clones referring to the question if its bootable.
I do test if they boot the first time, and then I update them in the future.

I did however run into a similar issue with a License key, a while ago.
Not from MS (because I don't use MS software), but I accepted the fact that I should keep my license keys somewhere save too.
I'm afraid that's part of the game...

After all it took me a couple of minutes to find it, but I was happy anyway about still having all my data on a working HDD..
 
Interesting. I removed the SSD from a 2015 Air and put it in an identical Air,(moved from 4Gb to 8Gb RAM, but same year, processor etc) but whilst it booted up ok, Office demanded the Key be re-entered.
 
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This definitely applied to an old version of Microsoft Office for Mac…2011 I believe. Upgrading or changing the hard drive in a system would always require re-entering the license. The license was attached to the hard drive identity.

The new version…I'm not sure how the licensing works.
 
Weaselboy said:
Understood... but when you boot to that cloned drive it looks like a different computer to the MS licensing software, then puts the smackdown on you.
Click to expand...

True. Always a problem with stand alone versions of Office. It can also happen that MS refuses to re-authorise if there have been too many changes of computer IDs in a period. Best way around this is the get a year's license for up to 5 computers (and I guess each of these can be changed once or twice, but not verified). I've also had this problem with running Win7 in VMware when changing computers (but there is a fix for this - note down the authorisation keys - they can be reused for the same VM on different computers).
 
Just installed window 10 on my Mac using bootcamp and have not done any backup.

Would CCC backup also backup the window partition (that is I could do a full restore that would give both the Mac and window partitions)? Similar question for ARQ.
 
Sorry, just found the answer on CCC webpage. CCC can not make a bootable clone of the bootcamp partition.
 
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