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Carbon Copy Cloner - Users Thread - Yosemite to Mojave to Big Sur - and after
- Thread starter mikzn
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Great info 👍 - I hope you don't mind I added a link to your post on the front page of this thread so that others that start on the first post can go directly to your post
Also FWIW I have been using the CCC beta 6.03-b1 for my Monterey rMBP back up and was able to create a clone that incrementally updates and is boot-able (at least until the next Monterey update)
I can live with that - If I have to do a complete new "clean" back up for every Monterey (or Big Sur) update, so be it - it was very fast and the incremental updates are super quick
Carbon Copy Cloner 6.0.3-b2 available if you have beta downloads enabled
Just upgraded to 6.0.3-b3 and also Monterey B5 - then did a back up after both updates - it did an "incremental back up" (1 min 4 sec) about 4 gig of new or replaced files (4 days since prior back up)- and shows up in the start up disk as an available start up disk (bootable).
I have a Samsung 970 Pro 1TB blade and enclosure (destination clone) to clone the existing (internal) Samsung 970 Pro 500g blade and will swap the ssd's in the next few days and install the "incremental clone" as the internal drive to test
I am assuming this will work on Big Sur as well - it did before I upgraded to Monterey
I have 2 MBP's 1)Mid 2012 i7 on Mojave CCC-5 2) mid 2015 rMBP i7 on Monterey CCC-6 both back up fine and clone perfectly with their respective versions of CCC
I have a lot of 32 bit Applications I did not want to give up - that is the reason for keeping the 2012 on Mojave
Upgrading from Mojave and earlier? - Catalina / Big Sur / Monterey do not support 32 bit applications - see this link to check for 32 bit apps before upgrading to Catalina and later - Go64 "Quickly scan your disk for 32 bit applications"
Here is a screen shot of several Mojave Back ups - CCC 5 - scripts to varios drives and important folders
Might be cool to see how we each set up CCC ? - see screen shot below of multiple back ups and a weekly clone- Time Machine does not do this well - IMHO
I have a lot of 32 bit Applications I did not want to give up - that is the reason for keeping the 2012 on Mojave
Upgrading from Mojave and earlier? - Catalina / Big Sur / Monterey do not support 32 bit applications - see this link to check for 32 bit apps before upgrading to Catalina and later - Go64 "Quickly scan your disk for 32 bit applications"
Here is a screen shot of several Mojave Back ups - CCC 5 - scripts to varios drives and important folders
Might be cool to see how we each set up CCC ? - see screen shot below of multiple back ups and a weekly clone- Time Machine does not do this well - IMHO
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Here are a few screen shots for anyone curious about CCC 6 settings for Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey
I have been backing up / cloning since Monterey B4 (initial clean clone to a new Samsung 970 PRO 1TB drive) and have been doing several weekly incremental back ups for about a month - mean time, passed thru the beta 5 up date and the incremental back ups continue to work fine after the update and are bootable - Booted from the external to make sure.
I have been backing up / cloning since Monterey B4 (initial clean clone to a new Samsung 970 PRO 1TB drive) and have been doing several weekly incremental back ups for about a month - mean time, passed thru the beta 5 up date and the incremental back ups continue to work fine after the update and are bootable - Booted from the external to make sure.
Just a note that I found Monterey beta 6 workable for a USB-A connected 3 TB HDD being used, that crashed on beta 4 and beta 5. The difference of using a fast SSD vs a much slower HDD might have had some bearing with your backup success. Beta 6 is more stable it seems.
Past "SuperDuper" BU users, and now giving up on trying to keep CCC for bootable BU creation: Apple is consistently blocking external HD backup software (E.g., SuperDuper or CCC) due to questionable "bootability of the destination device", arising out of Apple's HD formatting hurdles! Hmm! We (1) do not want to "speculate" about our back-up's reliability, (2) we do not feel good having to confirm a CCC "disclaimer" that accepting a destination drive formatted by Apple "is outside of our (CCC) developmental control" and, "depends on the compatibility of your Mac, macOS, and the destination device". It appears Apple is leaving us with only two non-bootable backup choices: Apple's time machine or Apple's iCloud, both Apple proprietary systems! Please, we need reliable external hard drive bootability without needing to accept CCC or any other vendor's "disclaimer". Can anyone help?
(We use Apple's macOS Big Sur 11.5.2 on fully loaded iMac Pro computers and stay current on Apple OS updates.)
(We use Apple's macOS Big Sur 11.5.2 on fully loaded iMac Pro computers and stay current on Apple OS updates.)
I trust CCC far more than "Time Machine" - and despite all the comments on these forums and the "apple discussions forums" I have been able to make bootable back-ups for Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey along the way
As of Big Sur and Monterey the "system files" are locked - but - I have been able to make bootable clones on both Big Sur and Monterey - the only issue is that the macOS system is stuck at what ever version the 'Initial Clone" was done at - for example I just did an incremental back up on my BAK drive that was initialized at Monterey Beta 4 and have done multiple incremental back ups along the way (Monterey Beta 5 and Monterey Beta 6) 2 times a week that take about 1 to 2 min - very fast and no issues and have booted from the external back up many times to verify
The external drive boots fine with all the recent files and data - but - boots into macOS Beta 4 - this can be solved by booting from the clone and updating that "System" to the newer macOS - but I am not concerned that it has the very latest macOS version - as long as it boots fine and has all my recent data - which it does.
My suggestion is to get a working and bootable drive - preferably pick an empty drive - wipe it clean, format APFS, and make only 1 partition - then make a back up with CCC - if you do this you will not have to bother with the "Legacy Assistant" which I find confusing.
I have seen others post that installing the latest Big Sur or Monterey update on top of the clone to bring it up to date - but seems like too much work to me - it is really not that hard to wipe the destination drive once in while and make a complete new back up of the new upgraded system from scratch - especially if the target drive and the destination drive are both SSD's?
All that being said - I have been backing up 2 times a week (Clone) and never had a back up fail and always boots up fine with the most recent data and files - so CCC seems very reliable in my case and in fact is super fast
Thanks for the info.
Btw., I don't see the problem when you must boot from a backup that "missed" 3 or 4 intermediate system updates.
I suppose the copy-back will easily be updated again to today's level by APPLE as you boot it. Am I wrong?
;JOOP!
In my case - I always turn off my wifi when testing a clone - been doing that since before El Capitan - mostly because I don't want any software detecting a new install (deactivation) and also don't want Apple syncing
So I did not check the System preferences for upgrade as it was not connected to the internet
I did check the "macOS build numbers" on the macOS on the internal system and the external BAK and they were different - hope that makes sense
Exactly - there was no problem - the back up booted fine and all my most recent files were there - I am quite confident I can switch the blades and it will be identical except it will be a macOS version behind - no big deal IMHO
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Wonder if Apple is going to address this in any way next Tuesday? Not really a question for you; just wondering.
I also have a SSD backup (CCC) that boots .....just , for reasons I never investigated and don't mind, takes a few minutes / is rather slow in booting. Doesn't bother me as long as it comes up. Never bothered to check the Big Sur version but am sure it's probably doing the same as yours. Which I don't mind.
Carbon Copy Cloner 6.0.3-b3 available if you have beta downloads enabled.
- Changed
Relative date references (e.g. "Today", "Yesterday") in the Task Plan and Task History window are now correctly updated when a date change event occurs (i.e. at midnight). - Changed
SafetyNet pruning settings are now consistently visible when the destination is HFS+ formatted. - Changed
Errors that occur due to the OneDrive service's interference with CCC archinving activity on the destination are now suppressed. These typically go away on their own without intervention. - Fixed
Fixed a logic issue that caused the "Never show this dialog" setting to be ignored for the "Remove task audit" dialog. - Fixed
Fixed the "Bring all to front" menu item in the Window menu.
Update - after my post above #259 - I was curious about the build numbers not matching ( and I still feel it was a perfectly fine clone) - anyway - I was curious about the "Legacy Assistant" which I have been avoiding for no good reason and decided to use the Legacy Assistant to confirm the build numbers would be the same
After the new BAK with "Legacy Assistant" it automated what I was doing from time to time manually since Catalina - wiped the Drive - reformats to APFS and then does a complete BAK from scratch - result - it booted fine and now the destination clone has the same macOS build as the source (internal) - version 12.0 Beta (21A5506j)
My "take-away" is that I will continue the incremental back ups - except for when there is an macOS update - then i will do a "One Time" legacy assisted clone for the new macOS version
Just an update - FYI for anyone interested - see screen shot below for more detail
Start up Disks
After the new BAK with "Legacy Assistant" it automated what I was doing from time to time manually since Catalina - wiped the Drive - reformats to APFS and then does a complete BAK from scratch - result - it booted fine and now the destination clone has the same macOS build as the source (internal) - version 12.0 Beta (21A5506j)
My "take-away" is that I will continue the incremental back ups - except for when there is an macOS update - then i will do a "One Time" legacy assisted clone for the new macOS version
Just an update - FYI for anyone interested - see screen shot below for more detail
Start up Disks
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👍 - thanks
the external is booting in about 40 seconds - internal is about 20 seconds - fine with me
CCC 6.03 is released this afternoon
- Fixed
Fixed an issue in which CCC was unable to replace a folder on the destination with a symbolic link (i.e. because a folder on the source had been replaced by a symbolic link). This issue primarily affected macOS Catalina users, but could also affect Big Sur users for tasks that used the "Don't delete anything" SafetyNet setting. - Fixed
Improved the handling of cases where a source NAS presents a symlink as an ordinary file. Fixed an accounting issue that led to unusually high "data copied" values in those cases. - Fixed
Resolved a condition in which the "Maintain a record of transactions" checkbox became practically uncheck-able in CCC 6.0.2. - Fixed
Fixed a permissions issue that can cause applications to not work correctly when restored from a volume whose ownership is disabled. - Changed
Relative date references (e.g. "Today", "Yesterday") in the Task Plan and Task History window are now correctly updated when a date change event occurs (i.e. at midnight). - Changed
SafetyNet pruning settings are now consistently visible when the destination is HFS+ formatted. - Changed
Errors that occur due to the OneDrive service's interference with CCC archiving activity on the destination are now suppressed. These typically go away on their own without intervention. - Fixed
Fixed a logic issue that caused the "Never show this dialog" setting to be ignored for the "Remove task audit" dialog. - Fixed
Fixed the "Bring all to front" menu item in the Window menu. - Changed
Improved the handling of manual sort order changes of the Tasks list. - Changed
The CCC Dashboard window position is now retained when it's closed and later reopened. - Fixed
Fixed an issue in which CCC would not remove additional snapshots from the destination when free space was exhausted in the middle of a backup task (specific to cases where SafetyNet was disabled). - Changed
Fixed an issue that could cause slow performance during postflight re-verification of files copied by the current task in cases where the task was also configured to use the "Find and replace corrupted files" setting. - Changed
CCC will no longer create a snapshot on the source when the source and destination are folders on the same APFS volume. Instead CCC will use the APFS clonefile() function to make clones of files in these cases. - Changed
Resolved a case where CCC was stripping the destination volume's custom icon in a folder-to-volume task configuration. - Changed
The search field in the Task History window Audit tab now yields results that match folder names as well as file names. in the sidebar for a task or group. When the "group completed" icon is dismissed, that state is now recalled across launches of CCC. - New
Added a new "Last Successful Run" token for the email notification template. - New
Added a Start button to the "Upcoming Group and Task Events" view for task groups. - Changed
Updated how APFS volume disk usage is calculated on macOS Monterey. - Changed
Fixed a rendering issue for the Task Plan text on macOS Monterey. - Changed
Eliminated some spurious "updated attributes" transactions that were getting created when backing up to a NAS volume. - Changed
Resolved a conflict between the "Remove excluded items" setting and custom protection rules. Custom protection rules now have precedence over the "Remove excluded items" setting.
CCC 6.04-b1 is now available if beta downloads is enabled, the testing is mainly focused on qualifying this for Monterey now.
We're moving into the final phase of Monterey testing with this beta cycle. All outstanding issues that we're aware of have been resolved, so if you're still seeing an issue on Monterey, please report it via CCC's Help menu.
- New
We added a new "CCC Downgrade Assistant" feature, accessible via CCC's Utilities menu. The Downgrade Assistant can assess a backup volume's compatibility with Migration Assistant, and will create macOS Installer media using a specified volume and installer application. If you kick the tires on this new feature, please let us know how it goes for you. - New
We added another small new feature in the source and destination selectors. If the selected source or destination is a network volume, or a folder on a network volume, you can hold down the Option key to reveal a "Switch to AFP" or "Switch to SMB" menu item. We frequently see slow performance and errors from SMB-mounted volumes, and we often recommend that people try "the other" protocol when the current protocol isn't working out. Now we've made it really simple to switch between the two to see if using a different protocol will yield better results.
Looks like a difference of 57g between the source drive and destination drive? Did you try booting from the new back up to test it? check for a few recent files etc.?
Note: I always turn off my wifi / router when test booting a clone - so software does not get disabled and icloud does not start syncing etc
If you are on Catalina, Big Sur - I would upgrade to CCC version 6 - look like you are using CCC 5 ?
I will retry its with 6. I was having issues with 6 and so went back to 5, wasn't as straight forward as using 5, but will try again. 6 also seemed slower at doing the copy than 5 ( seemed to take nearly double the amount of time).
CCC 6.04 is available to update to now. This version of CCC adds official support for macOS 12 Monterey
We found very few issues with Monterey over the last several months so we're anticipating this to be a fairly smooth upgrade cycle. We offer some advice for people contemplating the upgrade, or eventual downgrade to/from this new OS here: Best practices for updating your Mac's OS.
This update includes a handful of changes that are applicable to Catalina and Big Sur users too:
This version of CCC adds official support for macOS 12 Monterey
We found very few issues with Monterey over the last several months so we're anticipating this to be a fairly smooth upgrade cycle. We offer some advice for people contemplating the upgrade, or eventual downgrade to/from this new OS here: Best practices for updating your Mac's OS.
This update includes a handful of changes that are applicable to Catalina and Big Sur users too:
- Changed
The expansion state of the last task group in the sidebar is now properly retained across launches. - Changed
The order of tasks within a task group as shown in the sidebar now tracks the run order defined in the "Upcoming Group and Task Events" table when the sidebar is configured for manual sort ordering. Likewise, tasks within a group cannot be sorted manually in the sidebar when the sidebar is configured for manual sorting. Order the tasks within the "Upcoming Group and Task Events" table to set that custom order. - Changed
Improved the handling of some failure cases when copying the Catalina System volume, e.g. when the destination volume drops offline, or when the destination Data volume can't be unmounted. - Fixed
Fixed an issue in which CCC would fail to mount the destination Data volume in cases where the destination System volume had been removed. - Changed
CCC will no longer remove the System volume from an encrypted destination volume after an OS upgrade. We can't update that System volume, so it becomes essentially useless, but removing it exposes a bug in Disk Utility in which it's unable to unlock the volume. Also fixed an issue in which CCC was failing to unlock those orphaned Data volumes. - Fixed
Fixed a couple issues that were causing exceptions.