Time machine backup vs Carbon Copy Cloner

[puckhead193]

Long story short, I think its time I need a fresh install of OS X. I want to do a back up of my HDD but don't know which route to go? Should I use Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner. I want to start completely fresh just transfer over my files and no OS/Apps etc. Which is the better route to take?

I'm leaning towards Carbon Copy only because I can have a bootable drive if something goes wrong. However, once the back up is made can I just drag and drop my files again? I'm mostly concerned about my iTunes and photos/lightroom/aperture libraries and playlist/folders? For instance if I copy of the iTunes Music Library.xml file it should recreate my library as it was, correct?

 

[Weaselboy]

For your purposes, CCC is better for the reason you mentioned.

Unless you just want CCC for use later though, you don't really need it for this. Just use Disk Utility to "restore" Macintosh HD to an external drive and you will have the exact same end result (a clone) as if you used CCC.

Just select your external, Backup in my example, then click the restore button then pick Macintosh HD in the dropdown and click the Restore button.

That xml is not the actual music. You will want to copy over the entire contents of the Music folder.

 

[Fishrrman]

CCC is what you want to use.

It will create an exact copy of the internal drive in "plain old finder format".

That means: just plug in the backup, mount it on the desktop, and "copy over what you need".

IMPORTANT:
If you choose to do this -- that is, if you wish to just "drag over" stuff from the backup to a newly-created account on the internal drive -- you need to take an extra step to avoid permissions problems.

Do this:
1. mount backup on desktop (just the drive icon)
2. click ONE TIME on the icon to select it
3. type "command-i" (eye) to bring up the get info box
4. in the bottom right, click on the lock icon and enter your password
5. toward the bottom left (in the "sharing and permissions" area), there is a checkbox "ignore ownership on this volume"
6. put a check into this box, then close the get info box.

Also:
BE AWARE that you CANNOT COPY the "main subfolders" in your old account (backup) to the new one. I believe these are "more than" just "folders" -- they are "symbolic links". These are the folders named "Music", "Pictures", "Movies", "Documents", etc.

However, you CAN COPY the CONTENTS of these folders.
It helps to keep paper and pencil nearby, to keep track of things as you go along.

 

[maflynn]

I prefer CCC for full system backups and using TM for incremental backups. To put it another way, CCC is much faster at restoring a system then TM is, so I use that for full system backups. TM is used when I mess up a document and I want to restore a specific version of the file.

 

[Traverse]

For your purposes, CCC is better for the reason you mentioned.

Unless you just want CCC for use later though, you don't really need it for this. Just use Disk Utility to "restore" Macintosh HD to an external drive and you will have the exact same end result (a clone) as if you used CCC.

Just select your external, Backup in my example, then click the restore button then pick Macintosh HD in the dropdown and click the Restore button.

That xml is not the actual music. You will want to copy over the entire contents of the Music folder.

View attachment 684469

Can I ask you something? I am about to purchase CCC and I've been reading on their site about working with FileVault (e.g. enable whiled booted into your backup drive). How does CCC work exactly. So say I make a clone once a month, if it's unencrypted does it just mirror what's changed on Mac each time? If I have the CCC disk encrypted does that mean it has to recopy ALL of my data each time and make a completely separate backup?

 

[Weaselboy]

So say I make a clone once a month, if it's unencrypted does it just mirror what's changed on Mac each time?

Yes... after the initial backup, CCC just moves over what is new or changed since the last clone.

If I have the CCC disk encrypted does that mean it has to recopy ALL of my data each time and make a completely separate backup?

No... once you do the initial setup with the encryption, CCC works just like if would if neither drive was encrypted. It just moves over new or changed files.

 

[Traverse]

Yes... after the initial backup, CCC just moves over what is new or changed since the last clone.



No... once you do the initial setup with the encryption, CCC works just like if would if neither drive was encrypted. It just moves over new or changed files.

Thank you. Can I ask one last thing? So my setup is an iMac with a 1TB SSD and then a 2TB HDD mounted to the back for offloaded storage. I have cloned my internal drive and enabled FileVault (which will take time). If I now clone the extended storage HDD to the same backup disk how can I encrypt that data? I presume the FileVault protection from the cloned internal drive will have no effect not he extended storage.

 

[Weaselboy]

You can just right click the external drive and select encrypt and it will encrypt the drive and preserve the data on the drive. Or you can just reformat the drive in Disk Utility to the encrypted format and start over since the data will be erased. Either way works.

 

[isaac32767]

OK, I just had pretty much the same situation and did pretty much what's been suggested here. I have an old Mac that I needed to update to Mojave using a patched installer. (Thanks, Dosdude1!) Since that's not risk-free, I wanted to be able to recreate my system from scratch if I had to. I was already doing Time Machine backups (Aren't you? WTF not?) but being primarily a PC guy I assumed I needed a complete clone of my drive. A little googling convinced me that CCC was the best tool for doing that. Except for some minor yak shaving, everything went great (thanks Bombich, great product), and I'm now running Mojave.

Except now I'm convinced I just didn't need that clone. When I booted my machine off a thumb drive containing the installer, it gave me the option of doing a completely new install using my Time Machine backup. If I had nuked my drive, I could have used that option instead of the clone.

So, am I wrong? Is there a scenario where I would have been glad to have the clone?

 

[Weaselboy]

So, am I wrong? Is there a scenario where I would have been glad to have the clone?

If you just want a backup you can use to restore from, either TM or CCC will work. The advantage CCC has is if you want you can actually boot to the CCC backup drive and operate the Mac off that drive if you want to where you can't do that with a TM disk.

 

[isaac32767]

If you just want a backup you can use to restore from, either TM or CCC will work. The advantage CCC has is if you want you can actually boot to the CCC backup drive and operate the Mac off that drive if you want to where you can't do that with a TM disk.

True. But puckhead193's use case is "I just want a backup I can use to restore," as was mine. So CCC appears to be overkill for us.

You know, initially, I tried to clone the drive onto a network share. CCC, anticipating the mistake I was making, reminded me that you can't boot from such a clone -- I needed to use a drive physically attached to my system. I cursed at the time -- cloning to disk images on the network is standard practice on Windows and Linux. But now I see it's not really useful for Macs, because restoring from a clone is just not something you need to be able to do.

 

[Weaselboy]

True. But puckhead193's use case is "I just want a backup I can use to restore," as was mine. So CCC appears to be overkill for us.

I agree... like I said, if you just want to be able to restore TM does the trick just fine.

 

[jbarley]

Except now I'm convinced I just didn't need that clone. When I booted my machine off a thumb drive containing the installer, it gave me the option of doing a completely new install using my Time Machine backup. If I had nuked my drive, I could have used that option instead of the clone.

So, am I wrong? Is there a scenario where I would have been glad to have the clone?

Yes there sure could be, such as when your TM restore fails, which happens all too often.
As a rule it is good practice to have more then 1 backup for just such scenarios.
Also as often happens when you discover that you have a corrupt file or files, your TM backup has already automatically backed these files up making a restore impossible.
Then it is a really good feeling that you can open your last cloned backup and cherry pick and copy these files back over.

 

[Kidbilz]

If you just want a backup you can use to restore from, either TM or CCC will work. The advantage CCC has is if you want you can actually boot to the CCC backup drive and operate the Mac off that drive if you want to where you can't do that with a TM disk.

What would you recommend for me upgrading my ssd pcie for my MacBook Air?

Would I be able to use CCC to create a clone bootable ssd? That is, a new SSD that I can replace my old ssd with.

Would it be bootable after replacement?

Is TM able to do this with a brand new, scratch SSD (pcie)?

Hopefully, all I want is to be able to take out my old ssd and then replace if with a new scratch ssd.

Please help and thank you so much.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is TM able to do this with a brand new, scratch SSD (pcie)?

Yes... you can option key boot to the TM USB disk and that will get you to a recovery screen where you can format the new drive and restore the entire OS and all your apps and data.

 

[Kidbilz]

Thank you so much for your prompt response. Greatly appreciated.

Please help me with more information. Can you help me understand the sequence of events, generally?

What is this "option key boot"?

Is the TM USB disk, an external flash disk?

What items, physical items and software, do I need to complete this process?

Thank you.

 

[Weaselboy]

Here you go... get an external USB drive of some sort. Plug that in and use Time Machine to make a full backup.

Then install your new internal drive. Now attach the Time Machine USB disk and hold down the option key on the keyboard when you power up. That will take you to a boot select screen where you will want to select the Time Machine disk (it should be an orange icon) to boot from.

That will take you to a recovery screen that looks like this.

Start Disk Utility and erase the new internal drive to macOS Extended Journaled format then quit Disk Utility.

Then click Restore from Time Machine Backup and go drink a beer while it restores the OS and everything to the new drive.

When that is done, power down and unplug the TM USB drive then start up. It should boot the internal drive.

Now go to System Preferences and in the Startup Disk panel select the new drive as the boot disk.

 

[Kidbilz]

Amazing. Thank you so much. Woah.

Is there a reason, other than speed, that I should use CCC over TM?

 

[Weaselboy]

Is there a reason, other than speed, that I should use CCC over TM?

You will get the exact same end result.

 

[Kidbilz]

Sorry to bother again. Will

You will get the exact same end result.

Thank you, truly.

I see that MacBook Air has a different end connector than M.2 or NVMe. I am worried that the length #mm size of the SSD, I buy will not fit and I'd love to buy NVMe. Any tips?

 

[Weaselboy]

I see that MacBook Air has a different end connector than M.2 or NVMe. I am worried that the length #mm size of the SSD, I buy will not fit and I'd love to buy NVMe. Any tips?

I'm sorry, I have not really kept up on what drives are used in those, so I can't be much help there.

 

[MacLuvn]

Hello. Newbie here; happy to have found this thread (and that it is basically active)...forgive me if posting to a thread that is about two months since the last reply was made is unwelcome.

I had to send off my Macbook Pro off to Apple to get some work done; used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone the drive, to make a fully bootable backup. Then, wiped the drive and restored to factory settings.

Then.........after receiving it back from Apple, I went to go use my CCC 'fully bootable' cloned backup to restore my drive.

I'm using Yosemite 10.10.5 by the way.

So, I go to take a look at the directions on Bombich's site.

All seems pretty straightforward, until.......um.....this part:

"Unless you're restoring just a handful of individual files, we recommend that you restore your backup to a freshly-formatted disk. See 'Preparing your backup disk for a backup of OS X' for complete instructions on how to format the destination. Please note that this is especially important when restoring macOS High Sierra, and imperative if encryption is currently enabled on the destination. You must erase the whole APFS container if you're restoring the system!"

I'm not "restoring just a handful of individual files." I'm restoring an ENTIRE BACKUP of my once-active system. So their statement of, "we recommend that you restore your backup to a freshly-formatted disk".....is bothersome.

Does this mean that I need to erase my current internal Macbook Pro hard drive? "Freshly format" it??? Take off Yosemite or something? What in the world are they saying?

It's essentially at "factory installed settings" as it is. What else would I possibly need to do to it at this point so that the restore-copy of the hard drive I have on my external drive can be placed on the internal drive without issue? It is , again...I'll state that it is basically at "factory settings" (Yosemite 10.10.5) as it is....

Thoughts?

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm not "restoring just a handful of individual files." I'm restoring an ENTIRE BACKUP of my once-active system. So their statement of, "we recommend that you restore your backup to a freshly-formatted disk".....is bothersome.

Yes... you should option key boot to the CCC drive then use Disk Utility to format the internal drive, then CCC clone the external to the internal.

 

[Panic5d]

I have used both and truth is that Ccc is way much faster.
However there is a funny thing happening:
When I use CCC it takes almost 2t for a full copy while Time Machine takes only 1.2T which is exactly my IMac storage capacity

Does this makes any sense ??

 

[FarmerBob]

I have been using CCC for many many years and although it has evolved past the point of allowing you select and turn on features that guarantee you a one-to-one duplicate, that can be compressed or booted from or as it says "Cloned!" I have had a couple conversations with the Developer about why he did certain things, it was because he's has a Developer and not an End User mindset. CCC grabs everything that's why an archive might be bigger than a TimeMachine archive. I have never had Time Machine, even now that it will archive more than just the Apple stuff, give me an archive that I was able to get everything back or would leave me feeling confident that I could get what I need back. PLUS! You can go into CCC archives and look around without an app. Can't with TimeMachine, the last time I tried.

"No Brainer! CCC!"