Need Carbon Copy Cloner 7 Help

[jparker402]

Some time ago bought CCC 6 as additional backup for my MacBook Pro. Do use Time Machine. Never did know much about CCC but it seemed simple (I am not particularly tech savvy). I did not set up a backup schedule. On the "main page" there was a "start" button which I would press and the green and blue lines would start across. Just updated to CCC 7. The "start" button has disappeared, and Bomrich is not telling me where it went. I do not know how to initiate a backup except (I guess) by scheduling it or by creating a task.

Main question is with CCC 7, what is the correct method of starting a backup when the mood moves me?

 

[berb]

one is in the bottom right corner

 

[jparker402]

That is where it was on my CCC 6, but it is not there on CCC 7. Did you convert from 6 to 7? If so, I have other questions. Thanks.

 

[eldho]

My start button is also where berb showed it. The interface for CCC7 is much the same as CCC6. IS your CCC7 window partly obscured by another window or a bit off the screen to the right?

 

[jparker402]

Not obscured but hunting around I found that there is a "standard mode" and a "simple mode"! I was in standard mode: no "start" button. Switched to "simple mode": "start button appeared!

HOWEVER, more questions. I installed CCC 7 but installing it without regard to CCC 6 (figured that would take care of itself). CCC 7 is telling me that I have used 468.56 and have a capacity of 490.26. It also seems to be telling me that I have the external drive running MS OS something. And says I am not using APFS (I think that is what it says). And wants to know if I want to erase CCC backup? Any ideas what this is all about? Should I have erased my external drive when I loaded CCC 7 and started all over again? Should I do that now? And use APFS format?

 

[chabig]

Not obscured but hunting around I found that there is a "standard mode" and a "simple mode"! I was in standard mode: no "start" button. Switched to "simple mode": "start button appeared!

I can't explain what you're seeing, but the Start button is in the same place in both modes.

 

[eldho]

APFS is now the normal file system and CCC 7 works better with it than the old MS DOS system. In order to change the file system the backup does have to be erased as part of the process of changing over to the new file system. In that situation I would want to have another back up so that I would not be operating with no back up for a while.

And so to answer your question - yes, you should move over to the APFS.

 

[jparker402]

APFS is now the normal file system and CCC 7 works better with it than the old MS DOS system. In order to change the file system the backup does have to be erased as part of the process of changing over to the new file system. In that situation I would want to have another back up so that I would not be operating with no back up for a while.

And so to answer your question - yes, you should move over to the APFS.

I thought I set up my external drive for APFS when I originally got CCC 6. I presumed when I downloaded CCC 7 that 7 would keep the same settings. Maybe not? Plus I have not yet (knowingly) taken CCC 6 to the trash. Wonder if there is anyway to tell what my external drive is really set to at the moment?

 

[eldho]

There is a catch re setting your disk to APFS - one that caught me for a while. In the disk utility app you need to select the view option in the app menu bar and select show all devices. Then you select the media option on the left so that you are setting the whole disk to APFS.

In case you may have already done this - disk utility tells you what file format you have the disk in already - this will let you know whether you still need to convert the disk or not.

 

[HDFan]

CCC 7 is telling me that I have used 468.56 and have a capacity of 490.26.

Be sure to keep 20-30% free space on any drive that you use

yes, you should move over to the APFS.

depends on the device type and application (TM requires it):

HFS+ (Journaled) is absolutely the best choice for formatting spinning media (traditional hard disk drives). This performance benefit becomes especially pronounced when creating RAIDs.

Why You Should Always Use HFS+ to Format Mac Hard Disk Drives | Larry Jordan

 

[Brian33]

depends on the device type and application (TM requires it):

HFS+ (Journaled) is absolutely the best choice for formatting spinning media (traditional hard disk drives). This performance benefit becomes especially pronounced when creating RAIDs.

Why You Should Always Use HFS+ to Format Mac Hard Disk Drives | Larry Jordan

Well, maybe.

One, if I interpret the linked chart correctly, a single HDD (not RAID) formatted as APFS has read/write performance about 98% the speed of formatting it HFS+. I don't think 2% slower for a backup is at all significant. So, not itself a reason to go with HFS+. Even 50% slower for a backup might be an acceptable tradeoff for other benefits. It appears that the author's entire justification for making such an "absolute" statement is based on performance, only.

Two, the best choice "depends on the device type and application," as you say. Well, APFS enables the use of CCC's (and Time Machine's) ability to use snapshots to efficiently store older versions of files. It is an amazing feature for backup applications. Highly valuable for this purpose. Also, using APFS allows CCC or TM to maintain the special clone and sparse files, saving backup disk space for these types of files. So APFS is worth considering.

 

[jparker402]

Just used disk utility. The drive I use for Time Machine is formatted in APFS. The drive I use for Carbon Copy Cleaner is formatted for MAC OS Extended (Journaled). The CCC Backup drive is a 499.76 GB drive with 467.43 GB used and 36.32 GB free. From what I understand, Time Machine is my viable backup while I an erasing, reformatting, and reloading CCC with APFS. Plus I am using iCloud.

Before I do that I would like to know if either APFS or Extended would be readable if I give either drive to someone with an MS machine. Ultimately I would like to be sure my survivors can use my files and photos on their MS machines.

Given my CCC backup drive is a 500 GB drive that I have used 467 GB for backup currently, do I need a bigger drive? I believe that as my CCC backup fills, it deletes old data to make room for the new backups. Right now my Mac HD has 393 GB available of 494 GB. So I think my CCC backup drive has my my computer's drive backed up several times over.

You folks are providing me a wealth of info! Thanks!

 

[eldho]

Yes, time machine is certainly a good backup for security of your info when you are reformatting your CCC disk.

Compatibility with MS is another matter again. exFAT is the format which is compatible between Apple and MS. IBM compatibles cannot read APFS , MAC OS Extended or the like.

And yes, your CCC backup obviously has many copies. You can choose from CCC set up how much spare space it should leave. It will drop old snapshots as necessary to make space for your new backups. If you are keeping old snapshots then CCC will continue to fill up a disk of any size. I doubt that you would need a larger disk for your present lot of info as you will have quite old snapshots available as it is - unless you have some reason to go way back to restore something.

If you were going to spend money for another disk perhaps you could get on that you can format to exFAT for your 'survivors' to have access to your files and photos. This does assume that your photos are in a format that MS can read as the Apple Album approach I think is readable only by an Apple machine. If it is a standard format like Jpeg then they are compatible. Likewise your files may not be readable by them even if they can access your disk.

 

[Brian33]

Before I do that I would like to know if either APFS or Extended would be readable if I give either drive to someone with an MS machine. Ultimately I would like to be sure my survivors can use my files and photos on their MS machines.

As @eldho says, a Windows computer will not be able to read an APFS nor a MacOS Extended (also called HFS+) disk. I *think* there is (paid) software available to allow Windows read a MacOS Extended disk, but it would have to be purchased and installed. I doubt there is such software to read APFS. So, any disk you really need Windows to read should probably be formatted exFAT.

The drive I use for Carbon Copy Cleaner is formatted for MAC OS Extended (Journaled). The CCC Backup drive is a 499.76 GB drive with 467.43 GB used and 36.32 GB free.

Given my CCC backup drive is a 500 GB drive that I have used 467 GB for backup currently, do I need a bigger drive? I believe that as my CCC backup fills, it deletes old data to make room for the new backups. Right now my Mac HD has 393 GB available of 494 GB. So I think my CCC backup drive has my my computer's drive backed up several times over.

So it seems that you have about 100GB of data on your Mac. Even if you were to double that, your 500GB drive seems big enough to me.

It seems you currently have plenty of backup history. If the drive is formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled) as you say, then you must have been using CCC's SafetyNet feature. This saves older files in a special folder, until more disk space is needed. If you need to go back and get old file versions (or especially, if you want to see the entire source volume as it existed on a particular date), SafetyNet is not as convenient as CCC's newer "snapshot" feature, but to use snapshots the backup disk must be formatted APFS. Personally, I prefer to have CCC make snapshots on my backup disk, but SafetyNet is ok for most uses. If you stick with SafetyNet you would not have to reformat.

No matter how you do your backups, I wouldn't recommend formatting the backup disk itself as exFAT. I think that some filesystem features like extended attributes would be lost. And I feel exFAT is not as reliable, especially if there is frequent delete and write activity like regular backups do.

I would recommend a separate disk (or possibly a separate partition) for the files and photos you want Windows users to be able to read. This disk/partition would not need to keep version history, so it only needs to be as big as the data you will want to put on it. I *think* CCC can copy to an exFAT volume, so I'd schedule a regular task that would keep the "survivors disk" up to date.

This does assume that your photos are in a format that MS can read as the Apple Album approach I think is readable only by an Apple machine. If it is a standard format like Jpeg then they are compatible. Likewise your files may not be readable by them even if they can access your disk.

@eldho has a good point. In MacOS, are your photos saved in the Photos.app?

If so, they are saved in a "Photos Library", which *looks* (in Finder) like a single file. It's not -- actually it's a special folder called a "package". In Finder, you can right-click it and select "Show Package Contents". Your original photos. (without any of your edits) are within the "originals" folder. They are in standard image file formats (like .jpg or whatever the camera produced), BUT they all have random-looking names (with any recent version of Photos.app).

What I'm saying is that a Windows user could view and retrieve the original photos themselves (from your "surviors disk", but the filename and any edits you've done would be lost to them. Also album organization, keywords, captions, etc. -- unless they can access a Mac. (Actually, I believe there is Photos software for Windows, but I don't know if it can read a macOS Photos.library or not. That would be worth researching!) In any case, I would "test" the exFAT disk with a Windows computer to be sure I understood what can or can't be accessed by a Windows user.

If you don't use Photos.app (that is, you just copy the photos from the camera into folders on the Mac), then all that complication goes away. But so do all the organizing, searching, and other features of Photos.app.