Why Carbon Copy Cloner?

I am a new MAC user and have a question about cloning a disk drive. It appears that the "Restore" function of Disk Utility does what's needed. What is the advantage of using Carobn Copy Cloner that seems to be recommended by everyone?
Thanks

One can also do incremental backups with CCC. DU's restore is a full backup each time.
Here are the release notes of CCC for version 3.4.4. This version archives the Recovery HD so it can be recreated if it later becomes missing on the main Lion OS volume. It will also create a Lion installer drive (e.g. USB thumb drive) if the the Lion downloaded app is present in the Applications folder. I actually tried this out this morning and it works great. I have also used CCC to recreated my Recovery HD on my MBP after deleting it. Works everytime.
The most important item for me with CCC is the developer continually works on the product and enhances it with features people want. It's donate-ware and well worth a donation.

Similar Messages

I have an iMac 2013 running OSX 10.9.4. I want to use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup user files to an external hard drive. Then I want to remove iPhoto libraries from iMac. What will happen to the iPhoto libraries that I back up when I run backup in a

I have an iMac 2013 running OSX 10.9.4. I want to use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup user files to an external hard drive to free up space on my iMack Hard drive.
So, say I make the backup today, delete iphoto libraries from my iMac, and then backup my iMac in a week. What happens to the iphoto libraries that are on the external backup drive now that I am backing up the iMac where they no longer exist?
I will have them backed up to a separate second external drive as well.
I'm just very cautious about removing them from the hard drive.
Thanks for helping and understanding my crazy caution!

I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive.
That is fine and recommended.. use the fastest disk you can afford.. ie Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2.
In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives.
Let me be clear.. you want to partition the one disk.. use it for TM and move your files to the external disk.. and then backup to the same disk.. You can do it.. but that is not a backup.. that is an experiment in how long you can get away with running files and backups on the same disk before you lose everything.. like Russian Roulette.. pull the trigger enough times and laws of probability will do you in.
You must have backups on a different disk .. otherwise it is pointless.
Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?
No.. you can buy special USB and Thunderbolt external drives that support RAID..
BUT that is still not a backup.. let me show why.. you make a silly move and corrupt your file in aperture.. it is not that rare.
Raid will corrupt all copies of the files.. it is replicated across all disks.
Delete a photo it is deleted across all disks.. you have no recovery.
Alway, always consider RAID system one disk.. backup onto another disk.. and if the photos or movies are at all important to you.. ie your family .. make another copy and store in a relatives house.. There is no such thing as too much redundancy.

SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, which one to use in my case?

Let me start of my saying what i am going to be doing...
Right now i have Panther on my Mac, i am going to install Leopard and do a clean install which will erase everything on my Mac's HD, so i bought a external FireWire HD to backup all of my files , i was actually just going to backup my music, pics & videos but then i was told that the best thing to do is to backup the whole HD (don't know why this is necessary).
So the carbon copy cloner is the most popular here on the forums while Super Duper looks like it's very simple to use, the only problem i see with Super Duper is that it's not Leopard compatible but i don't see that as a problem in my case since i am going to be using Super Duper with Panther and then i am assuming that i can manually drag and drop files i need ( music, pics and videos) back on my Mac's HD after i install Leopard, am i right here?
Please reply with any advice you have or suggestions, greatly appreciated if you will, thanks in advance.

Marat Voznyuk wrote:
i was told that the best thing to do is to backup the whole HD (don't know why this is necessary).
Because that allows you to revert to a known, good, bootable OS, in case your Leopard installation fails. It also allows you to simply use the Migration Assistant with a successful Leopard installation.

MacPro wont back up to Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner?

I am running 10.6.8 on my 2 x 3 Ghz Intel Mac Pro with 10 Gb of Ram. I have been backing up my two internal drives to an external 2 Tb WD for over a year using time machine and it would lose the drive every once in a while but I could get it back. Now after multiple erasures and reformats I can't get Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner (not at the same time : ) ) to run any faster than 1Gb/13min. Just my big ol' music drive will take 6 days at that speed!
I know there is something wrong for these speeds to be this slow. Does anyone have any suggestions of ways to speed up transfer and get the data flowing freely like it should or even theories about what's going on? I am using USB 2.0 from the drive to the tower. Cheers.

First what interface did you use? USB2? can't and expect any decent backup performance and forget zeroing a drive. FW800? on some WD MyBook, yes.
I would if possible move it into a FW800/400/eSATA drive case from OWC.
Add a PCIe SATA + USB3 CalDigit card and use that.
Move the drive inside an option? some WD MyBook can't, were built around the external drive case.
Your profile is out of date 10.4.11 is way old and didn't include TimeMachine (10.5 Oct 2007)
Lion and ML are better at Disk Utility and managing disk drives.
I use WD Green, very inexpensive, but no MyBook (yet, maybe USB3 NAS some day).
Why keep your data on one drive that has been beaten to death and not try a WD Black or couple other drives - or do you have those just not listed? Clone your system, clone your data, and even a spare TimeMachine... but I would go with two system backup drives. That is safe, and covers anyone's important system and media and digital library needs.

Advice on Carbon Copy Cloner vs. Time Machine

I have been stuck with a crappy all in one router/modem from the cable company for the last year. Yesterday, I bought an Asus RT N56U. It works great and I get great range. I almost went with an Airport Extreme, but went $40 cheaper. Then, while I was there I decided to get a hard drive for backups since I really need to be better about this with all of the pictures we have of our young children. My wife and I also have Macbooks from 2006-2007 era. Mine's 1,1 with an upgraded memory to 2GB and a new 500GB HD. My wife also has a new HD and the same specs. Anyway, I was tired of hooking them up for time machine backups, so, I tried to format my new Toshiba 3TB hard drive with 3 partitions, all MacOS Extended. One Partition for each of us for time machine and one for random other storage. I wanted a box where I could access this stuff from my iphone if I wanted, just because I thought it was cool to use aicloud (asus).
Anyway, I backed up my computer and hers using time machine with a direct connection to each computer. Then, I tried to hook the hard drive up to the router and can't find it. Come to find out the router only supports FAT and NFTS and one or two other formats. It does not support Mac OS.
So, now I've tried to figure out a way around this. Carbon Copy Cloner says that it will support non Mac OS formats for the hard drive, but not for a bootable copy. So, I could theoretically use CCC to copy things to the HD through WiFi if it is formatted non MacOS, just I wouldn't get a bootable copy. Maybe, I could just copy things like pictures and what not and not all the crap that ends up on my computer after 6 years.
Or even could CrashPlan do a local back up through Wifi?
I basically want something similar to the functionality of Time Capsule with or without Time Machine, but kind of like saving a few bucks, getting 3TB, and a pretty solid router.
Seem reasonable to anyone?
Sometimes I think I should have just gotten a time capsul ... Need to double check Best Buy's Return policy.
Thanks!

Sometimes I think I should have just gotten a time capsul ...
So do I.
Time Machine supports two and only two backup devices: a locally connected volume (like your Toshiba HD) and Time Capsule. If you are fond of the pictures you have of your young children, then use a supported backup method.
You can exclude specific volumes or folders from Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner.
Why anyone would buy anything from Best Buy is one of the great mysteries of life. Good luck returning it.

Booting Carbon Copy clone on Retina Macbook

First time posting on the forums, I hope one of you guys can help me out :-).
I bought a Retina Macbook a couple of days ago, and rather than migrating with Setup/Migration Assistant from my old MBP (2.26GHz, running 10.7.4), I wanted to start fresh & manually migrate the stuff I want to keep for the new machine. My intention is to wipe the old MBP with a fresh Lion install for my wife. As a precaution (in case I forget something crucial) I made a Carbon Copy clone of the old HD, saved onto a 2TB Seagate Backup Plus external drive. The Seagate is USB3, with optional adapters for Firewire and Thunderbolt.
I formatted the drive & setup 2 partitions, both MAC OS Extended (Journaled), GUID partition, one for the clone, the second for general storage, and the clone process went smoothly. I checked that I was able to boot from the clone on the old MBP, with no problems. However, when I attempt to boot the clone on the Retina MBP, I get the grey screen & no entry sign. Same if I try through system prefs, startup disk.
Does anyone have any ideas why the clone will boot onto the old MBP, but not the Retina?
Your help is appreciated in advance.

Nope, I have just gone through all of this and I now got a brand new, pre loaded MBP retina and 3 geniuses all said that b/c the firmware is different that we can't boot from a cloned drive from a different computer.
This is weird, as I have cloned across iMac to Macbook and didn't get an issue.
I did the 10.8.1 update and still no joy so unless there is something we need to change in the boot files on our clone we are stuck with a drive that mounts yet doesn't boot.
If it were simply a software issue then the drive wouldn't mount or we couldn't access all of our files on the clone right?

Carbon Copy Cloner issue

In preparation to upgrade my 27" iMac running Mt. Lion with FCP 7 to Mavericks, I'm going to run a test of the OS on external drive. First off, I'm going to clone my current OS to the external drive after which I would upgrade to Mavericks. Using Carbon Copy Cloner, I clicked on their Disk Center option to create Recovery Partition on this external drive.
This morning, I read this section under notes "Cloning Apple's Recovery Partition":
"Why were other volumes on my disk unmounted when I created a Recovery HD?:
CCC uses a command-line version of Disk Utility to resize the donor volume. Resizing that volume requires making changes to the partition table on the disk, and Disk Utility may choose to unmount other volumes on the disk while it makes those changes."
Does mean CCC actually changed the size of my internal HD? If so, is this damaging?
Above that, it states:
"When CCC creates a new Recovery HD, it borrows space from your destination volume to create a new, hidden volume on that disk." This is I can understand but I am concerned that my HD has in some way been tampered with unless I am misunderstanding this.
Has anyone else used Carbon Copy Cloner or experienced this? Do I need to be concerned? Everything seems to be running OK. CCC does not have telephone support.
Thanks,
Phil

I've been using CCC with both ML and Mavericks and, if there is no recovery partition on the drive you are cloning to, it needs to create one (unless you'd rather not have one). And it needs to create enough space for the hidden partition to create it. No problem with that. It unmounts partitions and they will come back just as they were - I've not had a problem with that either.
CCC does not have phone support, but they have very good online support - Mike Bombich will reply if you post a question.

Can I update an iMac from another iMac using Carbon Copy Cloner?

I change office locations every 6 months and move to a similar iMac setup. At each move, using external hard drives, I update the "older" iMac HD with the current Mail, Addressbook, work files, etc. Currently, I am using Snow Leopard; the machine I am transitioning to is behind, using Leopard.
This time something new is before me, I purchased (honestly) the Snow Leopard upgrade for the iMac that I am transitioning to. So I have an OS upgrade plus a file plus a lot of application additions/upgrades.
The question is, can I use *Carbon Copy Cloner* to make an image of my current iMac and upgrade the 2nd iMac with all my recent applications in one fell swoop? I would

Arthur Levy wrote:
I change office locations every 6 months and move to a similar iMac setup. At each move, using external hard drives, I update the "older" iMac HD with the current Mail, Addressbook, work files, etc. Currently, I am using Snow Leopard; the machine I am transitioning to is behind, using Leopard.
This time something new is before me, I purchased (honestly) the Snow Leopard upgrade for the iMac that I am transitioning to. So I have an OS upgrade plus a file plus a lot of application additions/upgrades.
The question is, can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make an image of my current iMac and upgrade the 2nd iMac with all my recent applications in one fell swoop?
Yes. Noondaywitch is correct. As long as the version of OSX is no older than the one the newest Mac came with, and the older Mac is compatible (enough RAM, etc), and the drives are formatted properly, you should be able to clone from one Mac to an external HD, then clone that back to the other one.
When you make the clone, boot up from it and run several apps, make sure your internet connection and browser work, etc.
Before cloning back to the other Mac, boot it up from the clone and do the same.
You may have to change a few settings for your internet connection, of course.

How can we disassociate an Apple ID from a set of computers formated from a single computer using Carbon Copy Cloner and a single image and then Migration Assistant to install their old profile? The original ID is the Apple ID for all the stores.

Here is a bit more detail.
We were replacing old teacher machines and wanted to do it as efficiently as possible. Therefore, we set up one computer, through the OS installation and ran all updates, and then made a disk image so that we can use Carbon Copy Cloner to image all the other computers without having to run all the other updates. Once they were set up to a base level and assigned to a teacher we used Migration Assistant to import all their old files and items. Everything has been fine until recently the computers became aware of needing an update for one or two apps. The machine asks for the original computer's Apple ID for all updates. We have logged out of the apple id and back in with another to test if running the updates will work with that Apple ID and even after a refresh it still asks for the other Apple ID. How can we disassociate the Apple ID from those other computers so that the individual who owns the original is not needed each time there is an update or has to give out their Apple ID password?

There are two parts to this:
1) It may be that you should have an Apple Education Support person helping you with this. If you have enough computers for this to be a problem, you may benefit from a Server, a site license, and an occasional visit from an Education Support Specialist.
2) The brief answer, if you want Individual Apple_IDs to control each computer, is to buy new copies of Mac OS X under those new Apple_IDs and re-download and re-Install. Mac OS X is customized to the Apple_ID before it is downloaded.

Can I Use Time Machine With Carbon Copy Cloner?

As of today, I upgraded my iMac (and eventually my Macbook) to Snow Leopard. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to create a clone of my drive to my external (I did a clean install) and now that Snow Leopard is installed, I only want to put back on to my computer just certain files, such as a select selection of my documents, some of my iTunes library, etc. Given that I couldn't find that option in Migration Assistant, I just manually copied over what I wanted from the clone on my external.
Still, I would like to keep a daily backup for my iMac's HD and that's where Time Machine comes in, but there's some questions I have before I do it:
Given that my iMac's HD now has significant free space (as I only brought back, say, 10% of the stuff to my iMac from my external when I cloned on CCC), if I enabled Time Machine to back up my iMac's HD stuff, it wouldn't overwrite the 90% of stuff on my external with the 10% that's on my iMac's HD, would it? For instance, I have about 20,000 songs on my external drive, but maybe have brought back only, say, 5,000 to my iMac (for now). Given that my iMac's iTunes Music folder shows 5,000 songs on it, when TM backs that up to my external drive, it won't overwrite the other iTunes Music folder which has the other 15,000, right? The same thing could be applied for documents, photos, etc. If not, how would TM deal with that? I would hope to avoid the other extreme, which are duplicate files/folders.
I guess I just want to be able to have the ability to get into that cloned drive on my external if I need to add more stuff to the iMac or if I need it one day to boot up the machine. But I also want to be able to have Time Machine at hand to back up daily the little that is on my iMac right now. So I suppose I'm wondering how can I achieve this without the two conflicting or screwing up?
Thanks!

MM1010 wrote:
when TM backs that up to my external drive, it won't overwrite the other iTunes Music folder which has the other 15,000, right?
Correct. Time Machine won't delete anything else on the same volume.
But as Barry says, it will use all the empty space available, before it starts deleting its oldest backups, so there will eventually be a conflict. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Also see #1 there, to be sure you have enough space for Time Machine to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups.
A better bet, however, would be to use a separate external HD. If you have the Time Machine backups on the same physical HD, when it fails (and they all do, sooner or later), you risk losing both.

On a Mac mini OS X server 10.8.5 TimeMchine cannot copy 2.5 TB to a 6 TB Thunderbolt disk, runs out of space, Carbon Copy Cloner works perfectly

On a Mac mini OS X server 10.8.5 TimeMachine cannot copy 2.5 TB (from a Lacie 2big Thunderbolt data disk) to another 6 TB Thunderbolt disk, runs out of space, Carbon Copy Cloner works perfectly: claiming just 2.5 TB after the copy. Thunderbolt disk is
LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series 6 TB

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Mac Pro Boot slow after Leopard Update and Carbon Copy Cloner

I just purchased a 1TB Internal hard drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm - and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my original hard drive (which is running Tiger). Everything seems to be normal, except the the long boot up process. The desktop appears, the dock appears, and then there is a long pause of 20 to 30 seconds before the drives mount and and the desktop folders appear. I have 10 gigs of RAM, I have rebuilt the Directory with Disk Warrior 4.1, and also repaired the disk permissions (although some of them state that they can't be repaired). When I reboot from my original 250 Gig hard drive, the boot is lightning fast. Any thoughts? I have many third party software programs installed and am trying to avoid a fresh Leopard Install. Thanks, this is my first post!

this may happen on the first boot on a cloned drive because the system has to rebuild various caches that are not cloned. it should be back to normal boot speed after that.

What exactly is a Carbon Copy Cloner and does it work on iMac Intel?

A friend of mine recommended to me that carbon copy cloner is the best way to back up data including applications and that it is a freeware downloadable via their website. Can anyone explain to me (using layman's language) what exactly it is and give me a step by step procedure on what I have to do to make it work? Also, does it work on iMac Intel and if so, would I have to set anything differently??
FYI, I do have a La Cie firewire drive.

Did you check out their website? It really has a lot of info, but here it is in a nutshell.
CCC is a cloning software tool. It will make an exact - and bootable - copy of every last bit and byte on your internal drive. You can then use that FireWire drive to boot up your Mac, or restore the data from it in case of an emergency, drive replacement or failure.
It is not universal yet, but it does run through Rosetta.
Download the program and there is a PDF file with all the step by step instructions, but it is really easy to use.
BTW, LaCie has a program that is very similar called SilverKeeper.

Firefox crashes after Carbon Copy Cloner

I powered on the computer, and did not open anything other than Carbon Copy Cloner. I then copied one entire hard drive to another. Everything works, such as Thunderbird and Opera Next, except for Firefox! As it's my primary browser I have spent an hour or two trying to work out a few things. This was the second Carbon Copy Clone I did and it didn't state any errors during the copy process. Firefox was working flawlessly on the other hard drive.
If I open Firefox it goes straight to crash reporter - no Firefox window. If I try and open profile manager the same happens, and if I try and open in safe mode the same happens. I have tried repairing disk permissions. There is no sign of Firefox being open in Activity Monitor

please see this article and follow steps to send us the report of your crash
[[Firefox crashes - Troubleshoot, prevent and get help fixing crashes]]

Mountain Lion's Privacy Works Great - Carbon Copy Cloner Wants Contact List Access

Mountain Lion Woke Me Up - Carbon Copy Cloner Wants to access my Contact list
I got a message when I launched Carbon Copy Cloner that it wanted to access my contacts list
BYE BYE CCC - UNINSTALLED IT
i have lots of apps, and this one was the only one that broke my trust. How many more will there be.

Wow, fast answers!
William Kucharski has it right, though: It's asking in order to pre-fill registration fields. This is related to 3rd party application "sandboxing" in 10.8. You can see which apps are using your contacts in Sys Prefs > Security & Privacy > Privacy
If it makes you feel uncomfortable (and it will come up again and again from here on in in OS X), the thing to do is say "No" in the dialogue and continue using CCC and other apps.

Why Carbon Copy Cloner?

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