Neither SD or CCC will create a boot drive to an NAS will they? I know you can do a non-bootable image but it would really be great if I could just designate one of my USB NAS drives to create a bootable backup and click a button to update it as needed.
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Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper?
- Thread starter Ace2617
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The NAS would have to have a HFS+ file system / partition then. Maybe there is a way to boot from a growing disk image (on the NAS). However, years ago this wasn't possible.
I use both CCC and SD, but for different purposes:
As others have pointed out, CCC has a slight edge over SD for backing up the system disk. I used to use SD for that, and it worked well, but I recently switched to CCC. It handles incremental backups a bit better, and it has (in my opinion) a better user interface.
However, I also need to backup my Time Machine disk. CCC will not do that. SD has no problem with it.
So I use both.
If the purpose of a clone is disaster recovery, then there isn't any reason for the clone to be bootable. All modern Macs can boot from the recovery partition, if it exists, or over the Internet if there isn't a recovery partition. Once booted, you just clone back to the new device.
Yes, but if the networked clone does not include all the system files, if you boot to recovery and clone that image back over, it won't be bootable either. Unless I am misunderstanding what you are suggesting.
I think it would probably work to reinstall the OS from Internet recovery, then use the clone as the source for a setup assistant migration (import).
You're right. But a clone, by definition, includes all of the system files. It would also work to reinstall the OS and migrate the data back. I've used both methods many times.
Understood and agreed. But I know the CCC documentation says a clone over the network will not copy system files, so it is not going to work to copy that back is what I am saying.
Have you been able to do a CCC clone over the network, the clone it back and have it bootable?
I haven't used CCC for a long time. I didn't know it would clone over a network, or the specific behavior. I hope I didn't muddy the water.
The idea behind the growing disk image was to mount the disk image located on a NAS as a local disk, make a clone, then mount the disk image on another Mac, make a netboot on the Mac that requires to boot. Alternatively one could try to use a VM running a Mac OS on a (linux) NAS that mounts the disk image and no second Mac would be required. I didn't try that, but it could work.
I still don't think that will work. I think you could make a sparse bundle on the local disk then clone to that, then copy the bundle to the NAS and have everything.
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/backing-up-tofrom-network-volumes-and-other-non-hfs-volumes
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/using-carbon-copy-cloner-back-up-another-macintosh-on-your-network
What about a remote Mac backup on a disk image mounted on the remote Mac / VM?
It looks like that would get you a good backup of your personal files and data, but from the way that support doc reads, it does not appear it would be bootable. By that I mean you could clone it back to a local disk and have it be bootable.
That's one of the major features I like about CCC. YMMV, but I do find what CCC offers meets my needs.
Did some tests and the answer is yes!
You are somewhat right!
For all that are interested, this is the point. Regularly, if you create an image file with CCC, it reports that it won't be bootable. That's true for remote and local image files. That's why I first created a sparsebundle disk image with Apple's Dik Utility on a remote Mac on the network and mounted it.
On the Mac I wanted to clone I fired up CCC and followed the procedure described at bombich's site clone over the network. In short, that procedure gave me an "Authentication Credentials" installer package for the remote Mac. Its purpose is to tunnel through ssh with a "public key authentication" (PKA), remote login has to be enabled on the remote Mac, too. I then successfully cloned from the source Mac to the mounted volume (image) on the remote Mac.
Then there comes the point where you're somewhat right...
A Mac has no out of the box solution to boot from that data, as there is no way to boot from a common image file directly or to boot over the network. That's where things get complicated.
In the days of Open Firmware there probably has been a command to boot over ethernet. I didn't find something similar for the EFI. My guess is, that one would need to tweak the boot loader, maybe with the help of gPXE, to do a successful boot over the network with a mounted sparsebundle created by CCC. Since that is not a standard procedure, I partially agree with you.
You may wonder, how I verified that the clone over the network is bootable then? Well, I can't completely, but what I did, was mounting the remote clone and cloned it locally to an USB drive (HFS+, GUID). If CCC doesn't do some unpredictable magic making the remote clone bootable, I expect it's a 1:1 clone. That USB drive attached to the source Mac was starting up and running perfectly including the Recovery partition.
I don't insist, that it's a perfect solution for everyone. A NAS would probably lack any official supported way to get the "Authentication Credentials" installed and there would be more investigation needed to find a way to boot over the network. However, in my opinion it opens up new possibilities for the backup strategy, making bootable backup clones remotely on the network, either to a physically attached and portable USB, FW or TB drive to get it booted without a second step or to back up bootable clones to remotely mounted sparsebundles that one can easily compact, compress and segment.
The standard for booting a Mac over the network is through macOS Server (the NetBoot part) that expects a NetBoot Image (.nbi file). That special image file format can be created with the System Image Utility one can find in his /Library/CoreServices/Applications. I don't expect that Apple's NetBoot server can boot from a common sparsebundle image, even though I read that a nbi is nothing else than a dmg with some extra stuff.
@mic j: CCC is not the right tool to make a bootable image or a bootable clone to a network only attached storage per se.
FYI: There is an instruction existing for configuring an old version of Mac OS X Client as a NetBoot server here http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Regular-Mac-a-NetBoot-Server!/ and it can probably done with a more recent version of macOS. There are also ideas around the net to set up a linux machine and likely a NAS as a NetBoot server.
After reading your reply, I was asking myself, what task exactly you expected to get done with CCC. Then I realized, that my latest post could be unclear and off-putting someone. In short: if CCC is able to clone some bootable Mac OS, it will stay bootable.
The first confusion: I'd prefer to speak of bootable and bootready.
1. I'd call a local attached drive with a common "bootable" backup preferably "bootready", because it's ready to boot and one can directly fire the OS up without performing additional steps before.
2. If one clones to a remote drive/partition with the "Authentication Credentials", I'd just call it bootready, if one intends to boot the remote Mac with that clone and call it bootable, if one detaches the drive, attaches it to another Mac and is booting from there.
3. I'd call an image file you are cloning to be bootable, but never bootready, because one has to reclone it to another drive, like @Weaselboy pointed out. Even CCC gives the notice that you can't boot from it, because macOS can't boot from disk images.
In your case 3. would perhaps fit and be entirely possible. You can clone to a disk image. If you select sparsebundle or sparseimage, you'd get a file that is able to grow and able to get incrementally written. All bootable, all without a necessary "Authentication Credentials" install, even to a remote location, even to another filesystem than HFS+ (FAT32 has around 4 GB file size limits, but exFAT and others would be more suitable). The only drawback is that you need to clone the system back to a drive, that you can physically attach. Could be considered as a full system backup solution, but not as an environment that produces bootready images like System Image Utility in conjuction with NetBoot on macOS Server. Unfortunately only due to the lack of a standard method of booting over the Network, not because CCC produces unbootable clones or something. Maybe, that clarification is helping you a bit more.
Be aware, that if you clone a recent system to a disk image, you can't reclone a Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks or higher system to a physical drive on Mac OS X 10.8 or lower, even though you can write such an image file to an older system.
To clear up another confusing part of my last post. I'm quite sure that it doesn't make any difference, if you clone to a remotely mounted volume of a disk image with the "Authentication Credentials" method or just to a disk image directly without the "Authentication Credentials". At least concerning the question, if the clone is bootable or not. It is, if the source system is. The differences are just the network communication (ssh) and the additional comfort (no password typing, security).
I've discovered, that if you're cloning to a physical remote drive by the "Authentication Credentials" method, there will be no Recovery HD partition written onto that drive automatically, even if one has deselected the advanced CCC option, not to warn if no Recovery HD is present. I'm not sure if that behavior is intended or not. At least you can attach the drive once to the source Mac and clone the Recovery HD from there locally. Another inconsistency is, that if you boot from that drive, you need to select a Volume called "EFI Boot" at startup, that substitutes the name of the volume that Finder shows.
Finally: Carbon Copy Cloner has always produced bootable, not always bootready clones during my tests.
I recommend SuperDuper. It does everything and the company is way better. CCC didn't over free updates to users when they had to get around the SIP problem no matter how recently you purchased. Just unacceptable.
I'm not following your complaint here. SIP was implemented in El Capitan which came out in September 2015. The last CCC paid update was to version 4 in October 2014 and any updates since then have been free.
Also, CCC clones over the recovery partition, where SD does not, so many users prefer CCC for that reason.
SD creates a bootable sparse image file to NAS, restorable through macOS DU. Recovery requires the NAS be attached locally or the sparse image file be copied to locally attached storage. My example: rMBP15 (mid 2015-macOS 10.12.3) to Asus RT-AC68U router with "Seagate Backup Fast" 4TB HDD attached to router by USB 3.0. The Seagate drive is formatted NTFS since it also holds many Windows (ugh!) backup files from years ago.
Interesting many folks seem to be pre-occupied with the need to clone the macOS recovery partition. Why? A system clone combined with periodic TM backups should be sufficient. I tested restoring TM backups which was faultless except for difficulties with the restored <Microsoft User Data> file which when restored would not support Outlook 2011/2016. Easy solution-just copy/replace the file from the latest SD clone.
I have four rMBP in a SOHO network. I tested the integrity of SD clones and TM backups a couple of times each year. Worked perfectly each time, except for the MS Outlook issue when restoring from the TM backups. SD clones maintained the integrity of this file on restore. And before the "purists" get on my case, I know my setup is not "true" NAS but hopefully you catch my drift.
I want to ask about very basic thing. If I get it right, CCC and SD only keeps one latest backup on external drive, that is bootable? Than means scheduled backup always overides old files with the new? So when I want to restore, I can't choose from what time I want to restore? I have to restore only from latest backup? Do I understeand it right?
I don't know about SD, but I can answer for CCC.
By default CCC just clones your drive, so the second time you clone anything gone from the source will also be removed from the destination. But there is an option called Safety Net you can enable, and that will take any files that are gone from the source and move them to a dated folder on the destination.