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Carbon copy cloner
- Thread starter macguru9999
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Having purchased/returned/repurchased multiple M2 machines recently, I can say that the reinstall OS/migrate from a CCC data backup works flawlessly and almost as fast as a traditional external clone used to.
Tip-of-the-hat to Mike Boreham about the Time Machine snapshots. I did not know that. It would be nice if those snapshots were available in a gui while booted up so that one could select them and reboot. I think Windows has that.
Tip-of-the-hat to Mike Boreham about the Time Machine snapshots. I did not know that. It would be nice if those snapshots were available in a gui while booted up so that one could select them and reboot. I think Windows has that.
Personally, I find the current inability of making a fully bootable system backup a pain. Having to reload the OS in a disaster recovery scenario just to make it bootable is an extra step we shouldn't really have to go through with these backup utils (SD and CCC)! I sure hope Apple fixes this bug in their ASR routine that is preventing this!
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It is due to security changes Apple made that make it very difficult to clone the OS volume now.
My understanding is that it is a bug in Apple's ASR code that is preventing the copying of the OS.
Dude it's not a bug.Just tested Ventura 13.3 release and the newly released 13.4 beta and Apple still hasn't fixed their ASR bug that prevents one from making a fully bootable backup with any of these 3rd party utils like Carbon Copy Cloner, and SuperDuper etc.. .
Really. Then explain below:
From Mike Bombich's Blog:
When Apple introduced Apple Silicon Macs, we discovered another snag. The "Apple Fabric" storage in these Macs offers per-file encryption keys (like the storage in iOS devices), and for months, ASR didn't work with it. Apple partially resolved that in macOS 11.3, but even now using ASR to clone the system back to the internal storage of these Macs doesn't quite work – it causes a kernel panic.
Back in December I had a conference call with Apple about the reliability and functionality of ASR on macOS and regarding Apple Silicon Macs in particular. They indicated that they were working to resolve the ASR/Apple Fabric issue, but they made it very clear that copying macOS system files was not something that would be supportable in the future. Many of us in the Mac community could see that this was the direction Apple was moving, and now we finally have confirmation. Especially since the introduction of APFS, Apple has been moving towards a lockdown of macOS system files, sacrificing some convenience for increased security.
Nice post. Thank you for sharing the blog excerpt.
If you're talking about 'Apple Fabric' in particular then yes the problem looks to be a bug. In general though it seems as if Apple is willing to complicate the creation of bootable backups. It'd be prudent for us all to rethink our backup workflows and our system configurations accordingly.
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Thank you Mike for your very clear description of restore options. I'm setting up a new Mac Studio M2 Max and manually adding only the tools and data I want to bring forward.
Then I'll use TM dual round-robin, and probably your #4 followed by #1 if ever I need to start over. While I own SuperDuper, I'm not sure there's much value in using this (in addition to TM) with Ventura. In High Sierra, the 2016 OWC tutorial describing dual TM + single SD clone drives in one of their 4-bay enclosures made sense. But if this technique no longer works smoothly, I'd rather not try to force SD / CCC into my processes. I have no issue installing a clean system and letting Setup Assistant do the rest.
I'd like to understand why a Mac owner today would use anything but Disk Utility for creating a full bootable image. I bought into SuperDuper years ago for speedy incremental image updates, and also because peers convinced me it does a better job than the Apple utility. But it seems that in 2023, backing up and restoring a full system is fast enough - no incremental backup needed. Then it's only a question of restoring cloned data, whether created by TM, SD or even Chronosync that I've used for years for data only.
Can you please elaborate on your "Data Volume?" I just read something about separate System and Data volumes hidden within essentially a system package file, which I guess has to do with how Apple is sandboxing the system in newer OSes. I barely understand all this as I am coming from High Sierra which is very different.
In High Sierra, I generally never put my stuff into the System User area. E.g. Documents, Downloads, Music folders briefly contain only what Apple puts there automatically. I've created my own data hierarchy on a separate drive, including default download folder, iTunes and Photos libraries. For Documents, my PDF user manuals live in iCloud for easy acces from anywhere. Photos live in this separate hierarchy, using Adobe Bridge to access. So the Apple-managed folders stay pretty empty and periodically I clean them out.
Moving to Ventura, I am rethinking all this. Does it make sense to store data in default locations in the User folder? If so, how does Apple manage these backups? Does TM essentially manage everything in the User folder? When restoring, does TM always start with a clean sytem then use Setup Assistant to restore the data?
If what I've described is accurate, it makes sense to me because iOS seems to work this way with iCloud backups and moving to new devices. So perhaps Apple is doing similar with its modern OSes. It also seems that 3rd-party tools like SD/CCC are not as necessary as they were a few years ago.
Per my previous post, I think this is the knowledge I'm looking for. I'll guess the "-data" volume you refer to is a hidden folder on the system drive. If SD, CCC, TM and Disk Utility are simply alternative ways to create a restorable -data volume, then I'll favor Apple's TM and Disk utility over any 3rd-party tool. Unless there are important advantages to using one of them.
For general copies and mirrors I'll continue using Chronosync. For example, I use CS to mirror my DAW scratch drive into a folder on my main data drive. Then it becomes part of the larger backup to multiple drives and cloud.
The Signed Sealed System volume is a separate volume from the -Data volume which is not hidden. Both are on the same physical drive. They are closely linked and Apple have done clever things with Finder to make everything appear as a single volume as it used to be before Catalina. For instance the /Applications folder contains the Apple apps on the SSV and the user installed apps which are on the -Data volume....all apparently in the same folder.
You can actually see exactly what is on the -Data volume at /System/Volumes/<drivename>/
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CCC or equivalent is necessary due to the tendency of TM to fail. In your 3-2-1 backup strategy only 1 backup should therefore be via TM