Can Migration Assistant restore from a full drive backup within a folder?

[Kirkafur]

I'm configuring a set of backup tasks using Carbon Copy Cloner. I have a big backup drive, and i'd like to put each drive that needs backing up in a separate folder at the root.

Something like:
"Internal SSD"
"Storage Drive"
"Sierra Drive"

If I backup a boot volume to a folder on my backup drive, would Migration Assistant be able to pull from that folder to restore my install? Would that cause any issues?

 

[satcomer]

it should be in own shard folder suture because Migration Assistant is not that precise!

 

[Kirkafur]

I'm not sure I understand. You're suggesting to backup the boot volume to the root of the backup drive, and then have other drives be folders on that volume, right?

 

[Boyd01]

Not certain, but I think Migration Assistant will only let you select a disk, not a folder. If so, you would need to create separate partitions on your backup drive, not separate folders.

 

[bombich]

Migration Assistant requires that the data is at the root of the volume, i.e. the same hierarchy as the startup disk.

Format your destination as APFS, then you can create separate volumes on the backup disk for each source that you're backing up. Better organization and protection for the data in the end, and the backup of the startup disk remains compatible with Migration Assistant:

Add dedicated volumes to an existing APFS-formatted backup disk

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
"I'm configuring a set of backup tasks using Carbon Copy Cloner. I have a big backup drive, and i'd like to put each drive that needs backing up in a separate folder at the root."

Can CCC even DO this?
Seems to me CCC will want (for a backup "target") either an entire drive, or else a partition on an existing drive.

For multiple CCC backups on a single drive, I've used multiple partitions (HFS+).
This works fine (and has for years).

I know that migration assistant/setup assistant can work with a CCC (or SD) cloned backup DRIVE.
I see no reason why they wouldn't work with backup partitions, as well.

But folders?
I have no actual experience, but I sense that's not going to work.

 

[Boyd01]

Can CCC even DO this?
Seems to me CCC will want (for a backup "target") either an entire drive, or else a partition on an existing drive.

CCC can definitely do this, I have an old 5tb hard drive with clones of my old Macs on different versions of MacOS in separate folders - very similar to what the OP has. If needed, each folder could be restored to a separate disk using CCC. That's not the issue, it's that migration assistant cannot use a folder as a source.

 

[Kirkafur]

Appreciate the insight. Ideally I wouldn’t need to partition so that snaspshots can use free space to backup anything here and there rather than each partition only having so much space. If one has a lot of space it’ll have more snapshots and another won’t.

 

[TinHead88]

I believe APFS assigns space to volumes as needed so there's no need to allocate partition sizes.

 

[Kirkafur]

Oooh, interesting. Thanks, I’ll check that out.