It should prompt you as soon as you try to boot off that flash drive. You better find that password. As you'll be SOL on doing anything other than upgrading from within macOS
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What do you think about Big Sur?
- Thread starter TwoLaneHighway
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
1) bootable backups are becoming a thing of the past in the name of security. The data partition has all of your applications, their settings and all of your data and account settings. The system partition has the operating system and the applications you cannot remove. Make a Big Sur bootable flash drive and then you can reinstall the OS. Migration Assistant works really well with a current Time Machine to restore your new system to exactly the point of the last Time Machine restore. Had a customer who had that problem a month ago.
2) Yes, that is the result. This trend means that backups are an absolute must. and I'm glad you have a habit of backing up.
You make it sound like Carbon Copy Cloner no longer has the ability to make a file by file copy of your hard-drive? (If that was true, then CCC would basically go out of business.)
Understand that a "clone" is much more than a "backup".
I do know the difference between a clone and a backup! Here's an article by Mike Bombich (creator of CCC) about the changes Big Sur is forcing on Mac cloning software developers. FYI: I'm using SuperDuper! by Dave Nanian.
I have a 2015 MacBook Air (4GB RAM) with BS loaded and it runs just fine.
I just think the login screen is ugly is all. In the beginning, you couldn't change it but, now you can.
I am on Bombich's site now trying to make sense of all of this...
Does SuperDuper allow you to do more than CCC cab do with Big Sur?
EDIT: [SuperDuper looks like it does less than CCC. However, ] I value simplicity; SuperDuper! does what I want it to do. With Catalina, it clones the System and the Data partition; with Big Sur (if I ever have a system that has to run Big Sur) it only clones the Data partition. There are few options in it. Nice and fast for me. Very reliable.
I'm really glad that I came here to MacRumors and that you enlightened me on this point.
Right now I feel sick about these changes, and to be honest, after reading most of the Bombich link you provided, I am still trying to digest what all of this means.
To me, creating bootable clones of my system was the ultimate in backups. It guaranteed that I had a bootable, usable backup at any point in time.
This is all a lot to take in, and I would stay it puts my system upgrade on hold until I can sort through all of this and feel comfortable that I understand what it all means. ;-(
I have A LOT of question now about clones and backups.
Should I create a new thread pertaining to CCC and post-Catalina OS's?
Should I create a new thread pertaining to CCC and post-Catalina OS's?
Looking back to the experience I had with the customer I told you about: her 2007 iMac died. It would not turn on, but she had her time machine backup plugged in and it was running all the time. I had a 2012 Mac mini that I sold her. I hooked up her hard drive and ran migration assistant and it restored everything. It didn't touch the operating system at all; it just moved all of her applications and data files and all her settings and her system was exactly the way it was. It just had a different operating system.
The same thing would happen with Big Sur: you simply install the operating system from a bootable flash drive, you hook up your hard drive that has your most current time machine backup on it and restore it using migration assistant.
Meaning, the fact that you can't clone the operating system partition anymore isn't really a problem.
The same thing would happen with Big Sur: you simply install the operating system from a bootable flash drive, you hook up your hard drive that has your most current time machine backup on it and restore it using migration assistant.
Meaning, the fact that you can't clone the operating system partition anymore isn't really a problem.
And I certainly understand that there's an awful lot of information being talked about now and it takes a long time to understand all of it.
Don't hurry upgrades.
I do this for a living and I've got a lot of experience and not everybody does, has or wants that experience!
Don't hurry upgrades.
I do this for a living and I've got a lot of experience and not everybody does, has or wants that experience!
EXCEPT, there is theory and there is application.
If a connecting rod in your car engine failed and the rod went through the side of your engine block, and I simply disassembled your entire entire and place it in another (similar) engine block with a replacement conencting rod, would it work?
No.
It might start, and sputter, but you can't take the internals on a used engine, place them into another used engine block, and have things work properly. (At the very least, you'd need to hone the cylinders, change rings and bearings, and so on...
That is the best analogy I can think of at the moment.
IN THEORY, all you do is migrate your applications, application settings, and data, and you are back up and running.
In application, I suspect there will be lots of times where things don't work as planned, and if you are lucky, you get stuck re-installing certain applications and having to re-configure your applications - which would be a horribel porcess for the software I use - and in a worst case, you'd end up rebuilding your whole machine from scratch.
Not sure that is a tradeoff i am willing to take for added security...
It’s stable for me. No issues. Just remember to back up your data in case if anything happens.