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carbon copy cloner question

heisenberg123

heisenberg123

macrumors 603
Original poster
Oct 31, 2010
6,498
9
Hamilton, Ontario
Hello I currently use time machine which I guess is doing what its suppose to but im looking for something simplier in the sense that im not interested in old backups I just want to always have a backup of the current state my macbook pro is in.

what i dont like about Time Machine is, i noticed it wont backup files that ive recently added, i ripped a bunch of my old DVDs to have the in MP4 format so i can play them on my media player, but they would not backup to my time machine untill the following day when i tried again. I would rather have something that evertime I plug into my external drive it backs up any and all changes to my MBP since that last time i plugged in.

my question is with carbon cloner, does it work the same as time machine, for backups? when i plug in my external will it find all the changes? and does it work as fast as a time machine backup or does carbon cloner always do a full backup overtop of the previous one?
 
"my question is with carbon cloner, does it work the same as time machine, for backups? when i plug in my external will it find all the changes? and does it work as fast as a time machine backup or does carbon cloner always do a full backup overtop of the previous one?"

CCC is one of the best pieces of software currently available for the Mac. It's head and shoulders above Time Machine for most purposes.

CCC will create a "bootable cloned backup" of your internal drive. That is to say (and UNLIKE TM) the clone will be an "exact copy" of the contents of your "main" drive, AND, it will be bootable as well. If for some reason your main drive is having problems, you can boot from the CCC clone and it will boot up and "look like" your main drive did (as of the last time you backed it up).

You CANNOT boot from a TM backup. This can leave many users "up the creek" in a moment of extreme need.

The way it works is this:
1. You do a "full clone" of your internal (the first time) using CCC.
2. As time passes, you update the clone with "incremental backups". What happens is CCC will scan your main drive, note what has changed, and add changed files (and REMOVE deleted files) to make the backup/clone identical with the original.

Thus, the backup always is a clone of the original, as it existed at the time of the last incremental backup.

HOWEVER -- a very interesting and important addition to CCC is that it can now "archive" older files that you have deleted from your main drive. This means that during the incremental backup process, instead of simply deleting files that have been changed/removed from your main drive, it will move them to a special area of your backup drive that is reserved for archived material. The end result is that you still have a "clone" of your internal, but you also have an archive of older (deleted from your main drive) files. As such, CCC has now added some of the advantages of TM, in that you can "go back" a ways to sift through older stuff if you need to. I don't use this feature personally, but it's there if you want it.

Yet, with all this, CCC is very simple to set up and use.

I suggest that you give it a try!
 
Fishrrman said:
"my question is with carbon cloner, does it work the same as time machine, for backups? when i plug in my external will it find all the changes? and does it work as fast as a time machine backup or does carbon cloner always do a full backup overtop of the previous one?"

CCC is one of the best pieces of software currently available for the Mac. It's head and shoulders above Time Machine for most purposes.

CCC will create a "bootable cloned backup" of your internal drive. That is to say (and UNLIKE TM) the clone will be an "exact copy" of the contents of your "main" drive, AND, it will be bootable as well. If for some reason your main drive is having problems, you can boot from the CCC clone and it will boot up and "look like" your main drive did (as of the last time you backed it up).

You CANNOT boot from a TM backup. This can leave many users "up the creek" in a moment of extreme need.

The way it works is this:
1. You do a "full clone" of your internal (the first time) using CCC.
2. As time passes, you update the clone with "incremental backups". What happens is CCC will scan your main drive, note what has changed, and add changed files (and REMOVE deleted files) to make the backup/clone identical with the original.

Thus, the backup always is a clone of the original, as it existed at the time of the last incremental backup.

HOWEVER -- a very interesting and important addition to CCC is that it can now "archive" older files that you have deleted from your main drive. This means that during the incremental backup process, instead of simply deleting files that have been changed/removed from your main drive, it will move them to a special area of your backup drive that is reserved for archived material. The end result is that you still have a "clone" of your internal, but you also have an archive of older (deleted from your main drive) files. As such, CCC has now added some of the advantages of TM, in that you can "go back" a ways to sift through older stuff if you need to. I don't use this feature personally, but it's there if you want it.

Yet, with all this, CCC is very simple to set up and use.

I suggest that you give it a try!
Click to expand...

thanks, what bugs me most about Time Machine is that issue i had were i ripped a bunch of DVDs and it would not backup till the following day, if i do a bunch of changes to files i want to be able to backup those changes immediately not 24 hours later
 
I will throw this out there, simply because it got me..

CC doesn't clone the recovery partition in Lion. No big deal as you can still boot to Option +R but if the system doesn't see the recovery partition you can't administer iCloud for Find My Mac nor Filevault.
 
Fishrrman said:
"my question is with carbon cloner, does it work the same as time machine, for backups? when i plug in my external will it find all the changes? and does it work as fast as a time machine backup or does carbon cloner always do a full backup overtop of the previous one?"

CCC is one of the best pieces of software currently available for the Mac. It's head and shoulders above Time Machine for most purposes.

CCC will create a "bootable cloned backup" of your internal drive. That is to say (and UNLIKE TM) the clone will be an "exact copy" of the contents of your "main" drive, AND, it will be bootable as well. If for some reason your main drive is having problems, you can boot from the CCC clone and it will boot up and "look like" your main drive did (as of the last time you backed it up).

You CANNOT boot from a TM backup. This can leave many users "up the creek" in a moment of extreme need.

The way it works is this:
1. You do a "full clone" of your internal (the first time) using CCC.
2. As time passes, you update the clone with "incremental backups". What happens is CCC will scan your main drive, note what has changed, and add changed files (and REMOVE deleted files) to make the backup/clone identical with the original.

Thus, the backup always is a clone of the original, as it existed at the time of the last incremental backup.

HOWEVER -- a very interesting and important addition to CCC is that it can now "archive" older files that you have deleted from your main drive. This means that during the incremental backup process, instead of simply deleting files that have been changed/removed from your main drive, it will move them to a special area of your backup drive that is reserved for archived material. The end result is that you still have a "clone" of your internal, but you also have an archive of older (deleted from your main drive) files. As such, CCC has now added some of the advantages of TM, in that you can "go back" a ways to sift through older stuff if you need to. I don't use this feature personally, but it's there if you want it.

Yet, with all this, CCC is very simple to set up and use.

I suggest that you give it a try!
Click to expand...

One other note to add to this informative post is that you can still set up your CCC backup to NOT archive older files. you do this via the "Customize these settings" button in the main dialog window.
 
might be a silly question but...

is carbon copy cloner cloning my partition size?

if i clone a 500GB hard drive than 1 day upgrade to a 1TB, will carbon copy cloner try and make the 1TB hard drive into 2 500GB partitions?
 
It shouldn't, but if it does, you can just go into Disk Utility, delete the extra empty partition and resize the first cloned partition. It won't affect data or anything else, just resize it .
 
iisforiphone said:
might be a silly question but...

is carbon copy cloner cloning my partition size?

if i clone a 500GB hard drive than 1 day upgrade to a 1TB, will carbon copy cloner try and make the 1TB hard drive into 2 500GB partitions?
Click to expand...

No. It will not clone or modify partition sizes. It will only copy data from one partition to another.
 
I'm currently using TM as my backup and looking at using CCC also.

Question:

If I get a new mac, can I copy specific files from an existing CCC backup to the new computer or is CCC just a bootable backup drive?

For example: On the new computer, can I simply plug in the HD with the CCC backup on it and copy specific files (music, pictures, videos etc...) to folders on the new mac?
 
curtisinoc said:
I'm currently using TM as my backup and looking at using CCC also.

Question:

If I get a new mac, can I copy specific files from an existing CCC backup to the new computer or is CCC just a bootable backup drive?

For example: On the new computer, can I simply plug in the HD with the CCC backup on it and copy specific files (music, pictures, videos etc...) to folders on the new mac?
Click to expand...

Yes, you can.
You can even specify what CCC clones/copies.

I use CCC to clone my system drives and also the drives I need for backup purposes.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Yes, you can.
You can even specify what CCC clones/copies.

I use CCC to clone my system drives and also the drives I need for backup purposes.
Click to expand...

+1

since starting this thread I have sucessfully, made backups and it makes all the changes on any backups after the first one, also was successfull at restoring it from a backup to a new hard drive, and its very specific to what folders you want to clone

love CCC and would never think of a reason to ditch it
 
curtisinoc said:
I'm currently using TM as my backup and looking at using CCC also.

Question:

If I get a new mac, can I copy specific files from an existing CCC backup to the new computer or is CCC just a bootable backup drive?

For example: On the new computer, can I simply plug in the HD with the CCC backup on it and copy specific files (music, pictures, videos etc...) to folders on the new mac?
Click to expand...

The ccc clone is just another hard drive with an exact copy of your data. You can happily connect it to your computer and copy files using finder off it. You don't need to use CCC to copy your data back.
 
CCC is such a well-designed app that I'm surprised Apple hasn't offered to buy it, since it is far FAR superior to Time Machine for backing up.

I sense that in "moments of extreme need", many more users have problems with their TM backups than do those who have used CCC to create backups/clones....
 
Fishrrman said:
CCC is such a well-designed app that I'm surprised Apple hasn't offered to buy it, since it is far FAR superior to Time Machine for backing up.

I sense that in "moments of extreme need", many more users have problems with their TM backups than do those who have used CCC to create backups/clones....
Click to expand...

agreed the bigest flaw i found with TM is if i add a bunch of new files like ripping DVDs as an example TM didnt see those as new files or changes from previous backup those files untill about 24 hours after they were ripped.
 
Sounds like I'll be purchasing another external HD for use with CCC . . . sounds like a good backup program. I'll continue to use TM for daily connected backups and use CCC as an additional backup.

Questions:

1. I have a 2TB iMac which I'll be using with CCC. Currently I have about 500GB being used (of the 2TB). Can I use CCC with a 1TB HD or do I have to have a 2TB HD to match my iMac?

2. Do you guys (CCC users) leave the CCC external HD constantly plugged in to your iMac/computers or just connect it for incremental backups (daily, weekly, monthly etc . . .)

Thanks
 
curtisinoc said:
1. I have a 2TB iMac which I'll be using with CCC. Currently I have about 500GB being used (of the 2TB). Can I use CCC with a 1TB HD or do I have to have a 2TB HD to match my iMac?
Click to expand...
No, unless you have more than 1 TB of data you want to backup. Btw, it is recommended to have at least 10 % of the HDD's capacity free (100 GB out of 1 TB).

2. Do you guys (CCC users) leave the CCC external HD constantly plugged in to your iMac/computers or just connect it for incremental backups (daily, weekly, monthly etc . . .)
Click to expand...
No need, but I do, as I have scheduled CCC to do a daily backup of my 60 GB SSD onto a 120 GB partition on one of the HDDs connected to my iMac.
And as the SSD is quite small, I use the rest of the external HDDs for storage and data access.
 
curtisinoc said:
Sounds like I'll be purchasing another external HD for use with CCC . . . sounds like a good backup program. I'll continue to use TM for daily connected backups and use CCC as an additional backup.

Questions:

1. I have a 2TB iMac which I'll be using with CCC. Currently I have about 500GB being used (of the 2TB). Can I use CCC with a 1TB HD or do I have to have a 2TB HD to match my iMac?

2. Do you guys (CCC users) leave the CCC external HD constantly plugged in to your iMac/computers or just connect it for incremental backups (daily, weekly, monthly etc . . .)

Thanks
Click to expand...

you dont need an identical HD to use CCC but you need enough free space to "clone"(backup) the folders you selected to be cloned.

yes i do backups everytime i add new files or make changes to existing files and then when you go to Clone again it makes all the changes including removing files from the backup that are no longer on the source

there is also an option to have it backup similar to TM where you can pick a date of what backup you want, or you can have it just always maintain the backup based on the source
 
Thank you: "iisforiphone", "simsaladimbamba" and "theSeb" for your responses.

I will definitely start CCC as a secondary backup (in addition to TM).

Last question . . for now :D:

After I create a CCC backup onto an external HD, can any mac read the files (documents, pictures, music files etc...) from this HD (via Finder), or does that mac need CCC software installed to view the files?
 
curtisinoc said:
Thank you: "iisforiphone", "simsaladimbamba" and "theSeb" for your responses.

I will definitely start CCC as a secondary backup (in addition to TM).

Last question . . for now :D:

After I create a CCC backup onto an external HD, can any mac read the files (documents, pictures, music files etc...) from this HD (via Finder), or does that mac need CCC software installed to view the files?
Click to expand...

Any Mac can read from it, CCC is not required. It is just another HDD, nothing special.
 
curtisinoc said:
Awesome. Thanks!

You think TM & CCC is a good backup strategy? I'm mostly worried about losing all of my documents, photos and music (huge music library). I'm not all that worried about software programs.

Currently, all I'm using is TM
Click to expand...

TM is okay, I just don't use it, as I don't like it and had more problems than it is worth it, though these problems were when TM was introduced and still in its infancy.

For my text based documents, I use Dropbox, as it is an online backup, thus accessible everywhere with internet access.
For my other data I just employ CCC, my digital photos are backed up twice (thus resulting in three copies of them) and my music is backed up once.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
TM is okay, I just don't use it, as I don't like it and had more problems than it is worth it, though these problems were when TM was introduced and still in its infancy.

For my text based documents, I use Dropbox, as it is an online backup, thus accessible everywhere with internet access.
For my other data I just employ CCC, my digital photos are backed up twice (thus resulting in three copies of them) and my music is backed up once.
Click to expand...

When you say "backed up twice", do you mean that you have 2 separate external HD's with a CCC backup on them?
 
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