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Question for Carbon Copy Cloner users

M

mares

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 14, 2009
14
0
Just a question for Carbon copy cloner users :)
how does it save your files? is it like Time Machine that keeps on saving until you max out your space? or it just clones your current files only when you instruct it?

the reason why I am asking is that I am planning to have 3 partitions on my external
hard drive (1 TB)

1 - 300 gb (for time machine)
2 - 200 gb (fat32) - for PC files
3 - 500 gb (for MAC OS files and Carbon copy cloner)

and I plan to use CCC on my third partition - was thinking that it
might be like TM that will keep on saving files till it gets full? -since most of my files would go to the 3rd paritition I would want to save as much space as I can

(by the way my internal hard drive is 160gb)


Thanks in advance! :)
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,478
43,405
CCC creates a mirror image of your hard drive. Its not a backup utility as much as a utility to produce a cloned image of your drive. So unlike Time Machine where you have multiple deltas sitting on your backup drive, you have a CCC drive that looks no different then your hard drive.
 
mysterytramp

mysterytramp

macrumors 65816
Jul 17, 2008
1,334
4
Maryland
It clones the source drive, block by block (I believe), but it's not like Time Machine. So it will copy your 160 GB hard onto the 500 GB partition.

I'm not sure what happens when the 500 GB partition has other files. You might lose them in the cloning process. It might make sense to divide the 500 GB partition into a 160 GB and 340 GB -- the 160 for CCC, and 340 for everything else.

mt
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,478
43,405
mysterytramp said:
I'm not sure what happens when the 500 GB partition has other files. You might lose them in the cloning process. It might make sense to divide the 500 GB partition into a 160 GB and 340 GB -- the 160 for CCC, and 340 for everything else.

mt
Click to expand...

Generally speaking it will ignore them. I think you can have an option to erase the target prior to cloning but by default its not selected. I have various folders on my external drive that came with the external drive and they're intact, even after multiple executions of CCC
 
angelwatt

angelwatt

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
7,852
9
USA
It can create clones, but can also do incremental archives, meaning it will only update files that have changed and archive them into a folder in case you need the older versions. If your HD fills it will not auto-delete anything, it will simply cease the backing up. You'll need to periodically check the backup location to see if you're running out of space. If more space is needed you can delete some of the archived folders, which are date stamped. Depending on how often you run the backup and how much free space you have will determine how often you need to check the drive space. I usually only need to check once a month maybe and I run the backup 3 times a week.
 
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