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Carbon Copy Cloner 7 - Users Thread

@RK78; why would you want to delete all snapshots and stop them from being created? The most important thing is you have 2 3rds of your disk free space. At least set it up to keep one snapshot a day for the last week or so in case you should need to revert to the state of the disk before you installed something that broke everything (just as an example).

The way I've set up my system, I set my internal to not create snapshots because it's not very big, but on my two externals that has backups of the internal, I have snapshots going back weeks and months because they have lots of space.
 
I'm happy with CCC v6 on Ventura, so I'm not upgrading yet. I still thought I'd buy the upgrade now, and install it later. Maybe when and if i go to macOS 15.

On the Bombich site, there is no 'log in to your account' and there is the buy now option of 23.90 Euros. Then if I click 'upgrade' I'm asked to fill in my v5 registration number. I do that and click 'request upgrade' and nothing happens. I can complete the purchase at 23.90.

So, anyone know if there is a upgrade discount at all?
 
Ben J. said:
@RK78; why would you want to delete all snapshots and stop them from being created? The most important thing is you have 2 3rds of your disk free space. At least set it up to keep one snapshot a day for the last week or so in case you should need to revert to the state of the disk before you installed something that broke everything (just as an example).

The way I've set up my system, I set my internal to not create snapshots because it's not very big, but on my two externals that has backups of the internal, I have snapshots going back weeks and months because they have lots of space.
Click to expand...
Most of this is fairly new to me. Sounds reasonable to keep snapshots enabled so long as things don't get completely out of hand, e.g., 42GB+ When doing backups - always manual - will have to remember to delete oldest ones.
 
Ben J. said:
Then if I click 'upgrade' I'm asked to fill in my v5 registration number.
Click to expand...


I found this on the Bombich site, so looks like V5 is not going to get you a discount for V7.

Will my CCC 3.5, 4, 5, or 6 license work with CCC 7?
Click to expand...
No, CCC 7 requires a new license. However, if you purchased a CCC 6 license on or after January 1, 2024, we will grant you a FREE license for CCC 7. CCC 6 licenses purchased prior to January 1, 2024 are eligible for upgrade pricing.
Click to expand...
 
RK78 said:
Most of this is fairly new to me. Sounds reasonable to keep snapshots enabled so long as things don't get completely out of hand, e.g., 42GB+ When doing backups - always manual - will have to remember to delete oldest ones.
Click to expand...
You could simpy set CCC to keep hourly snapshots for something like 240 hours (10 days), zero everything else and maybe set a disk usage limit of 100GB. then you'll have a buffer of ten days of snapshots to roll back to, should a disaster occur, and snapshots will never break the 100GB limit.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I found this on the Bombich site, so looks like V5 is not going to get you a discount for V7.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I'm on v6. I get the 50% discount without logging in (there is no login), and clicking 'upgrade' and entering my v6 reg.nr. and clicking request upgrade does nothing except take me to the checkout with the same 23.90 price. Well, nevermind.
 
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Ben J. said:
Sorry, I'm on v6. I get the 50% discount without logging in (there is no login), and clicking 'upgrade' and entering my v6 reg.nr. and clicking request upgrade does nothing except take me to the checkout with the same 23.90 price. Well, nevermind.
Click to expand...
I think that is the discounted price. I believe the full price is $50.
 
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RK78 said:
Wow, thanks, much, much more than I thought. 42GB Insane! Time to delete all those accumulated and turn off snapshots!*
*Except might be interested in trying to restore from a snapshot a some point (however, according to Bombich, doesn't look good with a spinner, which I'm still using -- a bit afraid to open this iMac up to replace the HDD with SSD.)
Click to expand...
I keep lots of snapshots on my CCC backups to USB HDD. For some backups, the total size of snapshots is greater than any single snapshot. No problems. I can only suggest:
1) Don't let an external HDD get too full - at least 25% free.
2) Consider what your recovery requirements are in terms of how much history you require. Set snapshot thinning accordingly and, if required, get a bigger HDD.
3) Related to 2 above, consider using multiple backup tasks with snapshot thinning appropriate to the source backup set - e.g. I want to keep history of photos for much longer than I need to keep history of documents.
 
Appreciate the replies on this topic. My strategy re. snapshots going forward will be pretty much to use the CCC defaults - since I'm always running CCC manually, backing up only every few days- while pruning when things begin to look too large.
 
CCC 7.0.2 b1-(8027) is now available — This is a pre-release update of CCC 7.0.1 (8016)
  • Changed
    Corrected the appearance of the Notes text in Dark Mode.
  • Changed
    UIUD resetting is now disabled for ExFAT volumes because the exfat.util resets the UUID to all zeroes (bug filed with Apple: FB13813658).
  • Changed
    When a postflight power management setting is selected that involves presenting the system's 60 second countdown dialog, CCC now wakes the screen before making the request so that this dialog is presented more consistently.
 
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RK78 said:
Appreciate the replies on this topic. My strategy re. snapshots going forward will be pretty much to use the CCC defaults - since I'm always running CCC manually, backing up only every few days- while pruning when things begin to look too large.
Click to expand...
Something I'm still trying to get my head around re. snapshots: why is it that the size of a snapshot on a particular date can vary so much in size? For example, today, latest, after running update is 844 KB and the previous after running update, for 5/18/24, is 3.0.1 GB?

snapshots samsung ventura 6:12:24.png
 
RK78 said:
Something I'm still trying to get my head around re. snapshots: why is it that the size of a snapshot on a particular date can vary so much in size? For example, today, latest, after running update is 844 KB and the previous after running update, for 5/18/24, is 3.0.1 GB?

View attachment 2388105
Click to expand...
It certainly can look very odd sometimes, and I'm not saying I understand it completely, but the basics are:
A snapshot is a list of files that are needed to restore a volume to that state and point in time. If a file is trashed and the trash is emptied, if it is present in any snapshot "list", it will not be deleted, even though it's not viewable in the Finder.

So, The "Today" snapshot says 844kb because that's how much data has been deleted, but is still present because it's needed for a restore. The snapshot from may 18th is 3GB because that's how much data has been deleted, but not deleted 🙂 because its needed for a restore to that date.

If you drag a file to the trash now, and empty the bin, the today snapshot should increase by it's size, and so clould other snapshots - it depends on whether the file is needed for a particular snapshot.

Another thing; I you delete a snapshot that says it's 1GB, doesn't mean you'll gain 1GB of fre disk space, because other snapshots may contain the data.

I just ignore the snapshot sizes.
All I care about is the total size of snapshots for a volume, as seen in CCC volumes section, the total size of files that are there because of snapshots, but you can't see in Finder.

IHTH.
 
Ben J. said:
It certainly can look very odd sometimes, and I'm not saying I understand it completely, but the basics are:
A snapshot is a list of files that are needed to restore a volume to that state and point in time. If a file is trashed and the trash is emptied, if it is present in any snapshot "list", it will not be deleted, even though it's not viewable in the Finder.

So, The "Today" snapshot says 844kb because that's how much data has been deleted, but is still present because it's needed for a restore. The snapshot from may 18th is 3GB because that's how much data has been deleted, but not deleted 🙂 because its needed for a restore to that date.

If you drag a file to the trash now, and empty the bin, the today snapshot should increase by it's size, and so clould other snapshots - it depends on whether the file is needed for a particular snapshot.

Another thing; I you delete a snapshot that says it's 1GB, doesn't mean you'll gain 1GB of fre disk space, because other snapshots may contain the data.

I just ignore the snapshot sizes.
All I care about is the total size of snapshots for a volume, as seen in CCC volumes section, the total size of files that are there because of snapshots, but you can't see in Finder.

IHTH.
Click to expand...
Thanks, never expected this topic to be so complicated. "Wrapping my head around" now seems insufficient to drill into the complexity of snapshots. Suppose much of this would become clearer with actual use. Note, URL is based on CCC 7, but suppose it's much the same in 6.

Mike puts this in context beginning here, at around 7 1/2 minutes in, and continuing
CCC snapshots youtube.png \
 
RK78 said:
Thanks, never expected this topic to be so complicated. "Wrapping my head around" now seems insufficient to drill into the complexity of snapshots. Suppose much of this would become clearer with actual use...Mike puts this in context beginning here, at around 7 1/2 minutes in
Click to expand...
The video does explain what is happening. But I wish there was more information in the snapshot table.

I suggest that as well as CCC's snapshot list, use Disk Utility with View > Show APFS snapshots enabled and in the list enable the columns "Private Size" and "Cumulative Size". DU is annoying in that the drop down to select columns says "cumulative size", but the column header displayed is "size" - I will call it "cumulative size".

CCC shows a column called "Size" for each snapshot. I think this is misleading. Look at DU - the equivalent column is called "Private Size" (a much better name). As the video says, both are the amount of disk space occupied by files unique to that snapshot - those that are new to this snapshot and have been deleted (or replaced) by the next snapshot. This is likely to be very variable (as you have noticed). It is the disk space you would recover if you delete just that one snapshot. That is reasonably straight forward.

Now consider what happens if you delete 2 snapshots. This will recover the space occupied by files unique to each snapshot, but also the space occupied by files in both snapshots but not in any other. So the space recovered will usually be larger than the sum of their CCC sizes (DU's private sizes)!!

In practice the questions I want to ask are like "how much space will I recover if I delete all last year's snapshots". CCC doesn't help with this. But DU "Cumulative Size" (column headed Size) does show this. This column shows steadily increasing values and tell you what disk space you will gain by deleting a snapshot and ALL its predecessors.

Note that this cumulative size is greater than the sum of the private sizes - think about why!
 
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Fishrrman said:
I turned "snapshots" OFF with CCC.

Don't need that stuff...
Click to expand...
I turned snapshots off too - on my internal drive. It's by far the fastest storage I have, the most expensive per-byte-cost, and I don't want to use up a large percentage of it by enabling snapshots on it.

Instead I enable snapshots on my two CCC backup volumes on my external 2TB drives. Each night my internal disk is cloned to these two volumes, and the snapshots go back a couple of months so I can restore a file or the whole disk should I want to. I feel two months is a good buffer, and any files older than that are lost forever. That way, the backup volumes don't grow in size forever.
 
The thread was moved from MacOS 12 to general MacOS forum hierarchy this morning so it not tied to some specific MacOS. It was also retitled as Carbon Copy Cloner 6/7 - Users Thread.
Generally with each major release you have Carbon Copy Cloner qualified to support specific MacOS versions with some overlap. CCC7 is really intended to be qualified to work with MacOS 15 Sequoia, but its perfectly usable for Ventura/Sonoma.

What's new in CCC 7?
System Requirements for CCC 7
CCC 7 Release Notes
System Requirements for CCC 6
CCC 6 Release Notes
 
Last edited:
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CCC 7.0.2-b2 (8035) is now available — This is a pre-release update of CCC 7.0.1 (8016)
  • New
    This beta of CCC officially kicks off our macOS Sequoia beta cycle. Preliminary testing hasn't revealed any problems or concerns so far. If you're testing CCC on Sequoia, please choose "Report a Problem..." from CCC's Help menu if you notice anything awry.
  • Changed
    Corrected the appearance of the Notes text in Dark Mode.
  • Changed
    UIUD resetting is now disabled for ExFAT volumes because the exfat.util resets the UUID to all zeroes (bug filed with Apple: FB13813658).
  • Changed
    When a postflight power management setting is selected that involves presenting the system's 60 second countdown dialog, CCC now wakes the screen before making the request so that this dialog is presented more consistently.
  • Changed
    Fix a "missing character" font issue for a message in the Task Plan for tasks that are configured to run "When files are modified on the source".
  • Fixed
    Fixed an issue where the "Delete snapshots that are older than {}" and "Limit snapshot disk usage to {}" values were getting swapped in the Snapshot Retention Policy table.
  • Fixed
    "At rest" encrypted volumes (i.e. the internal storage in an Apple Silicon Mac, or an Intel Mac with a T2 chip) are no longer presented as "Encrypted" in the Disk Center unless FileVault is explicitly enabled with a password.
  • Changed
    The Advanced Settings and Notes icons at the bottom of the CCC window now use a badge to indicate that customizations are applied rather than relying on color alone.
This beta of CCC officially kicks off our macOS Sequoia beta cycle. Preliminary testing hasn't revealed any problems or concerns so far. If you're testing CCC on Sequoia, please choose "Report a Problem..." from CCC's Help menu if you notice anything awry.

Whats in bold in spoiler notes is new with b2.
 
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So far haven't seen anything irregular with backup using CCC 7.0.2-b2 with dev MacOS 15 beta 1 thru 3. So if the PB arrives tomorrow July 15th, CCC should work fine. Using SSD and HDD for backup.

update. Revised seed of beta 3 which is first PB has no issues observed.
 
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CCC 7.0.2-b3 (8040) is now available — This is a pre-release update of CCC 7.0.1 (8016)
  • New
    This beta of CCC officially kicks off our macOS Sequoia beta cycle. Preliminary testing hasn't revealed any problems or concerns so far. If you're testing CCC on Sequoia, please choose "Report a Problem..." from CCC's Help menu if you notice anything awry.
  • Changed
    When you select a volume in CCC's sidebar and enable encryption on that volume, CCC no longer saves the user-specified password in the System keychain. The prompt for password retention is deliberately limited to cases where an encrypted volume is selected as a source or destination to a CCC task.
  • Changed
    Addressed a performance issue in the "Verify files copied by this task" window that could occur when selecting multiple files.
  • Changed
    Corrected the appearance of the Notes text in Dark Mode.
  • Changed
    UIUD resetting is now disabled for ExFAT volumes because the exfat.util resets the UUID to all zeroes (bug filed with Apple: FB13813658).
  • Changed
    When a postflight power management setting is selected that involves presenting the system's 60 second countdown dialog, CCC now wakes the screen before making the request so that this dialog is presented more consistently.
  • Changed
    Fix a "missing character" font issue for a message in the Task Plan for tasks that are configured to run "When files are modified on the source".
  • Fixed
    Fixed an issue where the "Delete snapshots that are older than {}" and "Limit snapshot disk usage to {}" values were getting swapped in the Snapshot Retention Policy table.
  • Fixed
    "At rest" encrypted volumes (i.e. the internal storage in an Apple Silicon Mac, or an Intel Mac with a T2 chip) are no longer presented as "Encrypted" in the Disk Center unless FileVault is explicitly enabled with a password.
  • Changed
    The Task Filter, Advanced Settings, and Notes icons at the bottom of the CCC window now use a badge to indicate that customizations are applied rather than relying on color alone.
This beta of CCC continues testing against macOS Sequoia beta cycle. Preliminary testing hasn't revealed any problems or concerns so far. If you're testing CCC on Sequoia, please choose "Report a Problem..." from CCC's Help menu if you notice anything awry.

This beta change:
Addressed a performance issue in the "Verify files copied by this task" window that could occur when selecting multiple files.
 
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