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Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper?

organicCPU said:
In general I prefer built-in solutions. Years ago I successfully used Disk Utility for cloning.
Maybe things have changed and maybe it was just happening to me, but when Tiger was released I had serious trouble to restore with that method. That time I switched to CCC, never had any trouble anymore and I was able to clone without rebooting, too. Getting back files from a Time Machine Backup was also a big trouble for me the time a friend switched from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
CCC makes intense use of rsync. AFAIK it's a custom compiled version different to the Mac OS X built-in rsync, because that version has (had) some bugs, too. For backup tasks I have a better feeling to use a solution that never disappointed me.
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Me too. Time machine has been nothing but grief and frustration for me, while CCC has performed flawlessly for over ten, maybe fifteen years. I've never used Super Duper but several podcasters I listen to seem to. The Loop or SixColors are running 15% promos on CCC currently.
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chabig said:
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.
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If you're making a clone, why not make it a bootable one? You then have your "computer" available anywhere if your drives die or are failing or it's stolen. BackBlaze, etc backup your data, but as Siracusa has pointed out, they're not clones.
 
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While this is an older thread, I am 100% a devoted user of CCC. I have used their backups to perform full disk restores on multiple occasions, and the process went flawlessly and saved me many hours of lost productivity, and thousands of dollars on licenses that I would have otherwise had to repurchase. In my opinion, their clones are the most robust backups one could ask for, and a program this good adds value to the higher price of a Mac.







kecinzer said:
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?
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Weaselboy said:
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.
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To further elaborate, in CCC5, with the simple settings, these are your options when creating the clone:
Screen Shot 2017-10-03 at 11.01.20 AM.jpg

This explains each option in detail:
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/protect...stination-volume-carbon-copy-cloner-safetynet


I've always used CCC to make the traditional clone (that is, if a file is not on the source drive [in my case the internal SSD], it is deleted from the destination drive [i.e., the drive with the clone backup]). As you noted, this means you only have one backup to restore - not multiple - and that backup is going to be based whenever the last time CCC was manually (or automatically) ran. This is why CCC pairs well with Time Machine IMO, since Time Machine makes incremental point-in-time snapshots (i.e., if you create a Word document in May, modify it in June, modify it again in August, and then accidentally delete it in September, Time Machine will [space permitting] store a copy of the May, June, and August versions of the document, allowing you to recover the file as it was from any of those points in time.)

CCC is especially useful with full system image restores (where you boot into the clone drive, format the Mac's internal drive, and then clone the clone drive into the Mac's internal drive, restoring the OS, Apps, and files [from the date on which you made the backup.]) Time Machine has some significant limits given it is more labor intensive, it obviously cannot do a full OS reimage, and it doesn't transfer entire Apps or licenses.
 
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ZapNZs said:
Time Machine has some significant limits given it is more labor intensive, it obviously cannot do a full OS reimage, and it doesn't transfer entire Apps or licenses.
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A lot of people don't realize it, but Time Machine can do a full restore, including the OS and all apps and their licenses, just like CCC does. You just option key boot to the TM disk and you will get a recovery screen with Disk Utility and a restore tool you can use to put everything back in place.

Some people like CCC because you can boot to the CCC clone itself and run off it, where TM requires a restore to a disk, but otherwise they function very similarly as far as a full restore goes.
 
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Weaselboy said:
A lot of people don't realize it, but Time Machine can do a full restore, including the OS and all apps and their licenses, just like CCC does. You just option key boot to the TM disk and you will get a recovery screen with Disk Utility and a restore tool you can use to put everything back in place.

Some people like CCC because you can boot to the CCC clone itself and run off it, where TM requires a restore to a disk, but otherwise they function very similarly as far as a full restore goes.
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The problem with Time Machine is that it can fail, and you generally won't know until you try to use the backup.

So, I gave up on Time Machine years ago. That said, maybe it's better now, but given all the grief reported on these forums about Time Machine, I suspect not.
 
EugW said:
The problem with Time Machine is that it can fail, and you generally won't know until you try to use the backup.

So, I gave up on Time Machine years ago. That said, maybe it's better now, but given all the grief reported on these forums about Time Machine, I suspect not.
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I use Time Machine running fulltime as my primary backup, then a CCC clone weekly (or so) then my users folder is backed up online... so triple coverage in case any one method fails.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I use Time Machine running fulltime as my primary backup, then a CCC clone weekly (or so) then my users folder is backed up online... so triple coverage in case any one method fails.
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Yeah, I use multiple backup methods too, but I've since stopped using Time Machine as one of them. However, I've moved most of my data to NAS, so Time Machine wouldn't apply for that portion of my data anyway.

As long as we are using multiple backup methods (including for the NAS), it's all good.
 
Weaselboy said:
A lot of people don't realize it, but Time Machine can do a full restore, including the OS and all apps and their licenses, just like CCC does. You just option key boot to the TM disk and you will get a recovery screen with Disk Utility and a restore tool you can use to put everything back in place.

Some people like CCC because you can boot to the CCC clone itself and run off it, where TM requires a restore to a disk, but otherwise they function very similarly as far as a full restore goes.
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Holy crap! When did this start? I was under the impression one needed to install the OS and use the migration assistant. I am clearly uninformed here!
 
ZapNZs said:
Holy crap! When did this start? I was under the impression one needed to install the OS and use the migration assistant. I am clearly uninformed here!
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As I remember, Time Machine can do this since I start using in 2015. But I don't have good results with restore. I tried 3 restores and only one pass without issues.

BTW. Thank you for explanation how CCC works. If I skip Time Machine, I thing that good combo for backup is CCC and Arq backup for cloud versioned backups.
 
ZapNZs said:
Holy crap! When did this start? I was under the impression one needed to install the OS and use the migration assistant. I am clearly uninformed here!
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It started with Lion 10.7.2 and has worked after that. It was broken in El Capitan (there was a plist you could edit to fix it), but started working again in Sierra. It is a nice feature because during the restore process is asks you to select a date to restore from. So if you pick a date from an older OS version, it will actually roll you back to that.
 
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Weaselboy said:
It started with Lion 10.7.2 and has worked after that. It was broken in El Capitan (there was a plist you could edit to fix it), but started working again in Sierra. It is a nice feature because during the restore process is asks you to select a date to restore from. So if you pick a date from an older OS version, it will actually roll you back to that.
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Do you have the edits to the plist to fix it? I can't upgrade to Sierra, use TM in combination with SD and would love to be able to have the option of restoring from TM as well as SD.
 
Weaselboy said:
It started with Lion 10.7.2 and has worked after that. It was broken in El Capitan (there was a plist you could edit to fix it), but started working again in Sierra. It is a nice feature because during the restore process is asks you to select a date to restore from. So if you pick a date from an older OS version, it will actually roll you back to that.
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Well I'll be. I guess I was still operating in my mind from the Snow Leopard days.

Ya learn something new every day! :)
 
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Weaselboy said:
The solution is in this post and was discovered by @Bruno09.
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After reading the thread you linked to, I interpret it to mean that I need the TM HD directly connected to my MBP to be able to boot into TM to do the recovery. My setup is the TM HD is connected to the AEBS. So it doesn't look like it's an option for me. Am I understanding this correctly?
 
mic j said:
My setup is the TM HD is connected to the AEBS. So it doesn't look like it's an option for me. Am I understanding this correctly?
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You are correct. TM backup to networked disks like that are stored inside a sparse bundle image, so won't work with this process.
 
Weaselboy said:
Not sure what you mean?
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if my operating system is installed on a 1tb and occupies say only 100gb a typical hard drive clone file would be an image of the 1tb drive and be 1tb in size. a trim feature would make the clone much smaller and closer to the 100gb size.
 
MacDawg said:
My Carbon Copy Cloner only clones what is used, it doesn't create an exact sized image of the source
I have a 1TB source and the clone goes to a 1TB partition on an external drive and it is substantially smaller than the 1TB
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Yes, but your 1TB source isn't full, so the external partition will be equally "not full".
 
MacDawg said:
My Carbon Copy Cloner only clones what is used, it doesn't create an exact sized image of the source
I have a 1TB source and the clone goes to a 1TB partition on an external drive and it is substantially smaller than the 1TB
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Cool then it probably does that automatically. good to hear.
 
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