My mac currently uses 32gb out of the 250gb ssd. I need a program to create a "system restore point" equivalent to some _smaller_ external disk (say 50gb) so that I can install some software on the main ssd and be able to revert to how the system was if said software messes up my system. Which program would you suggest?
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Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper?
- Thread starter Ace2617
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With a 50GB backup disk and the current usage of your hard drive I'd say you'd need to use CCC (my choice) or SuperDuper to clone…and you'd only have one "restore point" on the backup at a time. So you'd have to run the backup to the clone...then install your new software. If something goes haywire you'd have to boot from the clone and restore the entire clone to your Mac's hard drive (erase it and clone back).
If you're going to run Catalina you're better off to start fresh as they're switching from "partitions" to "containers"
It's not an either/or situation. Everybody should have a couple methods in place at least. Time Machine is excellent for continuous backup. Carbon Copy Cloner (or the like) is great for, as you say, that bootable backup*. I use CCC to maintain an offsite backup, and Time Machine for the day-to-day -- it's saved my butt on many occasions. CCC's "safety net" feature is nice and all, but not so fun to rummage through and certainly less intuitive than Time Machine's interface.
* That said, I haven't booted off an external drive in years. It's cool to have the option, I guess, but the recovery partition has made it much less frequently needed. And when I've migrated machines, I've typically just migrated accounts over from a Time Machine backup. It works quite well!
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Write bootable backups to an external drive with CCC and incremental backup setting. Sometimes keep additional compressed disk images of important system states.
Certain setups won't support booting or require tweaking:
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/help-my-clone-wont-boot
The apps CCC or SD others have discussed here will do what you want, but if you just want to do this one time as a restore point, you can do it with the app Disk Utility that comes with your Mac. Just follow the steps at this link and it will create a fully bootable clone just like the other apps.
https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/restore-a-disk-dskutl14062/mac
I'm going to say that CCC and SuperDuper are great at cloning entire volumes, and I'd give the edge to CCC for its intelligent cloning abilities.
However, CCC's tech notes cite its one downfall- it can't clone Time Machine drives because it ignores the Backup.backupdb folder because it contains 'proprietary Apple files.'
SuperDuper, however, WILL clone Time Machine drives; I've already used it many times to clone Time Machine volumes to other backups drives. Once I had to make a clone of a Time Machine volume because the user had a Drobo and was using it for Time Machine backup, but didn't use the option Drobo provides to make a proper Time Machine-compatible partition, they just used the default Drobo partition. So had to clone the TM volume to a big canned drive (think it was a 6 TB WD) and reformat the Drobo and add the Time Machine volume option. Then, used SuperDuper again to clone the backup onto the Drobo TM volume; TM still recognized the volume after the double backup.
This had the effect of giving the user two backups to boot.
However, CCC's tech notes cite its one downfall- it can't clone Time Machine drives because it ignores the Backup.backupdb folder because it contains 'proprietary Apple files.'
SuperDuper, however, WILL clone Time Machine drives; I've already used it many times to clone Time Machine volumes to other backups drives. Once I had to make a clone of a Time Machine volume because the user had a Drobo and was using it for Time Machine backup, but didn't use the option Drobo provides to make a proper Time Machine-compatible partition, they just used the default Drobo partition. So had to clone the TM volume to a big canned drive (think it was a 6 TB WD) and reformat the Drobo and add the Time Machine volume option. Then, used SuperDuper again to clone the backup onto the Drobo TM volume; TM still recognized the volume after the double backup.
This had the effect of giving the user two backups to boot.
I didn't know that about SuperDuper. I've had issues restoring the system from particular backup points using a normal TM backup. Have you ever tested a SuperDuper cloned TM backup to see if it successfully restores the system?
I've restored two machines using a SD cloned backup successfully.
I tend to use Carbon Copy more often as I often have to deal with people who waited too long to get their machine serviced and their hard drives start dying.
If CCC detects file I/O errors, it notates the file location in its log on each bad file and moves on.
If SD detects file I/O errors, it aborts the clone and tells you to seek data recovery help.
IMHO:
If you approach each case as there being a high chance there are media issues, use CCC.
If you know everything is fine and new and there shouldnt be any issues, use SD.
Each one is worth the money on its own merits.
I tend to use Carbon Copy more often as I often have to deal with people who waited too long to get their machine serviced and their hard drives start dying.
If CCC detects file I/O errors, it notates the file location in its log on each bad file and moves on.
If SD detects file I/O errors, it aborts the clone and tells you to seek data recovery help.
IMHO:
If you approach each case as there being a high chance there are media issues, use CCC.
If you know everything is fine and new and there shouldnt be any issues, use SD.
Each one is worth the money on its own merits.
I'm not sure if you're answering what I'm trying to ask. Have you restored a system using a SuperDuper-cloned version of a Time Machine backup (not a clone of the system HD)?
A whole system? Not yet, but individual files/folders have come back fine.
Sorry it took so long to reply, I had forgotten about this post.
BTW now I only use SuperDuper exclusively for cloning TM drives.
CCC and SuperDuper now support the new wacky hard drive/data grouping in Catalina APFS but I had a clone done by SuperDuper come back as an unbootable mess, this is on a 2019 rMBP that came with Catalina.
For Catalina backups sticking with CCC.
Sorry it took so long to reply, I had forgotten about this post.
BTW now I only use SuperDuper exclusively for cloning TM drives.
CCC and SuperDuper now support the new wacky hard drive/data grouping in Catalina APFS but I had a clone done by SuperDuper come back as an unbootable mess, this is on a 2019 rMBP that came with Catalina.
For Catalina backups sticking with CCC.
As a novice user with an early 2015 MacBook Air, I am getting a little frightened by these posts! Do you mean that my Time Machine and WD external hard drive (as well as being on iCloud) are inadequate? Never had a hard drive backup with my Windows machine before. Someday in the not too distant future I hope to get a new Mac (undecided on just which). Must I get one of these apps to transfer files instead of that Migration Assistant? And does one need to clone the hard drive before putting in whatever is coming after Catalina? Didn't for High Sierra or Mojave.
Don't let posts frighten you! Time Machine is very adequate for backing up your machine and transferring it to another computer. But as they say, don't put your eggs in one basket. That's why a lot of us do CCC backups along side our TM backups. Catalina just made it a bit more difficult to do clones, especially encrypted clones via CCC.
Speaking only from personal experience - all my data is in OneDrive. I've only done a TM restore once and while it took awhile, it was perfect. I've done several CCC clones and was very happy with the end result (I prefer them because of speed). But if I ever get a new Mac, I always set it up as new and just use OneDrive to transfer my data. So I'm probably not the best to comment on this.
I would only do CCC restores to the same device. I think TM is much better at going from one device to another.