Carbon Copy Cloner Question

[jasnw]

This is more of a curiosity question than anything. I'm rebuilding my backup strategy of making daily backups of my primary user directory to a network server (external USB storage on a Mini running Mavericks) on my new Monterey-based system. In the past I've made these as sparsebundle images, but after having problems I've not run into before I find that now Bombich recommends not using sparsebundles on network backup devices. OK, not a problem. But my question is regarding a side-effect. When I back up to a sparsebundle on this server the fans on the Mini never spin up. Now when I back up to a folder the fan always spins up. Anybody know what's going on here? I'm not worried about it, I'm just curious what's causing this.

 

[Brian33]

I use CCC to back up two of my Monterey Macs to remote folders (not sparsebundles) on my (High Sierra) Mini. I haven't noticed the behavior you're asking about, although my Mini (running High Sierra) is in another room. Seems very similar to your setup.

What you report is odd -- I can't think what might cause it, but I'm interested if you find out... if I get a chance I will monitor my Mini during a backup.

 

[rpmurray]

Anybody know what's going on here? I'm not worried about it, I'm just curious what's causing this.

I don't have an answer, but do both approaches take the same amount of time? I'm just wondering if CCC sees the sparsebundle as just one big file so it just continuously writes to it as big even chunks but with the folder it writes all the files individually. Have you used Activity Monitor to see what the core usage looks like under each scenerio?

 

[jasnw]

Sadly, I'm not motivated enough to go to this extreme (!). It probably has something to do with the size and number of chunks being written out to the external drive, which I'm thinking is less when a sparesbundle is involved, and there may be more done on the "send" machine side in the sparsebundle case and less on the "catch" machine. I'm just hoping someone already knows the answer so I don't have to dig into something I'm just mildly curious about. It's all working, it appears to be dependable, so DON'T MESS WITH IT.