Cloning Drives

[stanw]

I have several drives that are not included with my Time Machine backup that I want to start cloning to other drives. The drives consist of data and are not bootable. I want the cloning to be quick, reliable, fast and very user friendly. Can anyone make any suggestions regarding Which program might be one to get?

Thanks.

 

[jbarley]

First apps that come to mind would be CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper.
Either one would fill your needs and are very easy to set up and use.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
You need look no further than what jbarley recommended above.
Nothing else will do it better.

 

[stanw]

Between the two, is one faster, more reliable, or have any advantage to using over the other?

Thanks.

 

[Fishrrman]

For non-booting volumes, SuperDuper has one slight advantage:
It will create a "full clone" (i.e., clone the entire drive) FOREVER without having to register it (at least, it used to work that way, haven't used it in a while).

To do -incremental- backups (i.e., backing up only what "has changed") you do need to register it.

 

[MacDawg]

I can't say one is better than the other, but I have used CCC for many, many years and love, love, love it
No problem paying for it as it is essential for me

 

[dianeoforegon]

I have several drives that are not included with my Time Machine backup that I want to start cloning to other drives.

You can have Time Machine backup the drives. Simply go to Time Machine > Options and remove the drives you want to backup from the exclusion list.

I'm a huge fan of clone backups so I would encourage you to do both Time Machine and clone backup. One advantage of CCC is the ability to select "safety net". A clone is always an exact copy. The safety net when selected will save to a dated folder similar to Time Machine any files that were deleted.


CarbonCopyCloner http://www.bombich.com/download.html (All options are available free for 30 days)

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ (Free forever to do an erase and install. Purchased version allows for smart updates and schedules)

 

[MacDawg]

^^^^^
I too strongly encourage the use of both Time Machine and CCC

 

[CoastalOR]

I have both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! I have had good luck with both, but I prefer CCC since it will easily clone the Recovery Partition when cloning a boot volume and SuperDuper! does not.

There was also a a time in ancient history, when using OS 10.4 (Tiger), when a clone of the boot volume using SD was not bootable for some reason. A clone of the same volume using CCC booted perfectly. I lost some trust in SD that day, which brings up a good point, test your bootable clones by booting from them.

 

[stanw]

if I have two drives and I make a change to drive A (the original) and a change to drive B (the cloned drive) will the results synch using CCC?

Thanks.

 

[MacDawg]

if I have two drives and I make a change to drive A (the original) and a change to drive B (the cloned drive) will the results synch using CCC?

Thanks.

Short answer is "no"

Longer answer is maybe but I haven't tried it... if you use Safety Net with CCC and clone one way and back the other way again, the clones might retain all files, but certainly not in a normal synced fashion, it would just have the files available.

You might be able to achieve what you want using ChronoSync, but I haven't used the product myself
https://www.econtechnologies.com/chronosync/overview.html

 

[Fishrrman]

When you clone drive A to drive B using a cloning app (CCC or SD), when the clone finishes, drive b will be AN EXACT COPY of drive a.

However, you'll probably now unplug drive b (the backup) and set it aside.
Then, you'll continue to use drive a.

Drive a (of course!) will then "be changed" from what it was when you did the clone.

So, you have to run CCC (or SD) AGAIN to "maintain the clone".
And again, when the incremental backup is done, drive b will again be an exact copy of drive a.

Got it?
There's nothing complicated about this.

 

[stanw]

When you clone drive A to drive B using a cloning app (CCC or SD), when the clone finishes, drive b will be AN EXACT COPY of drive a.

However, you'll probably now unplug drive b (the backup) and set it aside.
Then, you'll continue to use drive a.

Drive a (of course!) will then "be changed" from what it was when you did the clone.

So, you have to run CCC (or SD) AGAIN to "maintain the clone".
And again, when the incremental backup is done, drive b will again be an exact copy of drive a.

Go it?
There's nothing complicated about this.

Understood, though sometimes I take an external drive to my office (in this case, drive A), leave it there for a day or two, make changes to files on it, come back home and need to access files so i use (Drive B) and at some point I would want to synch them back together. That is what I was wondering about.

 

[MacDawg]

Understood, though sometimes I take an external drive to my office (in this case, drive A), leave it there for a day or two, make changes to files on it, come back home and need to access files so i use (Drive B) and at some point I would want to synch them back together. That is what I was wondering about.

I get what you are saying... but if it were ME I would change the workflow instead of trying to find a workaround
This is the very reason I use Dropbox for files I need to access from multiple locations

If you are working on Drive A and Drive B independently and separately between clones, you are going to need something other than CCC
The ChronoSync I mentioned earlier might work, but I haven't tried it

 

[stanw]

I get what you are saying... but if it were ME I would change the workflow instead of trying to find a workaround
This is the very reason I use Dropbox for files I need to access from multiple locations

If you are working on Drive A and Drive B independently and separately between clones, you are going to need something other than CCC
The ChronoSync I mentioned earlier might work, but I haven't tried it

Thanks, I will look into that. I am using 1, 2, 4, and 8TB drives for photos and videos, so Dropbox really isn't an option...