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Cloning APFS High Sierra

M

Mike Boreham

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 10, 2006
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In addition to normal HFS+to HFS+, Carbon Copy Cloner v5 can back up an APFS volume to an APFS backup drive, and there is every advantage in doing this because it also backs up the Recovery, Reboot and VM partitions all in the same run. No more separate creating the Recovery.

So I have converted my clones to APFS. (actually erased them APFS and made new backup, rather than converting existing)

At this point SuperDuper! does not support APFS.
 
Mike Boreham said:
So I have converted my clones to APFS. (actually erased them APFS and made new backup, rather than converting existing)
Click to expand...
Although that will work, the CCC dev. suggested holding off a bit until we are sure APFS is stable.

Are you seeing any benefits to the source being in APFS?

I'm considering doing the same as you for my CCC clone.
 
Weaselboy said:
Although that will work, the CCC dev. suggested holding off a bit until we are sure APFS is stable.

Are you seeing any benefits to the source being in APFS?

I'm considering doing the same as you for my CCC clone.
Click to expand...

I have seen Mike's blog about holding off but I like being at the bleeding edge! I have TM backups too and a clone to HFS+. I have tested restoring a CCC clone to APFS both direct, and as a source for Setup Assistant, without problems.

If I am honest in my data to day work I have not seen a huge difference for APFS. The fast duplicating and elastic partitions are not everyday issues. Finder scrolls without pauses. Support for encryption only seems to mean no restart to convert to CoreStorage at present, but no doubt file/folder level encryption will come.
 
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Can you clone from apfs to an Apple HFS (for purposes of backing up your entire drive) and then if needed restore all the cloned HFS back to the apfs drive? I usually use the Recovery Partition and just disk utility inside that to do this in the old files system. Would it be better to format a backup spinner drive as apfs as well for this purpose? Can you even format a normal drive to APFS?
 
APFS. CCC works - clone and restore ok. But restore High Sierra (all system) from Time Machine backup not possible. Error all the time. And restore from clone with Disk Utilty not works too. In general, the Disk Utility on APFS is full of bugs.
 
amors said:
APFS. CCC works - clone and restore ok. But restore High Sierra (all system) from Time Machine backup not possible. Error all the time. And restore from clone with Disk Utilty not works too. In general, the Disk Utility on APFS is full of bugs.
Click to expand...
If you clone your drive with CCC from within High Sierra, will it clone over all your system files including the cache files etc which TM doesn't backup? And does it require an APFS formatted backup/clone drive to work?
 
xgman said:
Can you clone from apfs to an Apple HFS (for purposes of backing up your entire drive) and then if needed restore all the cloned HFS back to the apfs drive? I usually use the Recovery Partition and just disk utility inside that to do this in the old files system. Would it be better to format a backup spinner drive as apfs as well for this purpose? Can you even format a normal drive to APFS?
Click to expand...

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everything-you-need-know-about-carbon-copy-cloner-and-apfs


The CCC dev. put together an info page here with everything you need.
 
xgman said:
Can you clone from apfs to an Apple HFS (for purposes of backing up your entire drive) and then if needed restore all the cloned HFS back to the apfs drive? I usually use the Recovery Partition and just disk utility inside that to do this in the old files system. Would it be better to format a backup spinner drive as apfs as well for this purpose? Can you even format a normal drive to APFS?
Click to expand...

Yes can clone APFS to HFS+ but not sure about direct clone back. You might have to erase/install/migrate using the HFS clone as the source. Not sure how a clone back from HFS would handle the Recovery, Reboot and VM partitions.

Personally I feel more comfortable having source and clone as APFS than mixing.

You can format a spinner as APFS, I just did, but DU is a bit flaky and it took some repetition and fiddling about.
 
Mike Boreham said:
You can format a spinner as APFS, I just did, but DU is a bit flaky and it took some repetition and fiddling about.
Click to expand...

Oh, hmm, good to know. I wonder how that will work in practice vs the CCC HFS+ backup destination. Seems like it would be more straight forward apples to apples, but I'm not convinced AFPS on a spinner is a safe bet just yet.
 
xgman said:
If you clone your drive with CCC from within High Sierra, will it clone over all your system files including the cache files etc which TM doesn't backup? And does it require an APFS formatted backup/clone drive to work?
Click to expand...
CCC have option "copy all files/copy some files". Not require APFS formatted backup drive. I clone to external HFS+.
 
Yeah, and if your using an NAS for TM? IDK of any NAS that will play nice with APFS. Measure twice.. No, measure 4x if you're got a lot of data. Just see how it goes, and turn off auto-TM backup until you know everything is square.

Don't be in a hurry. Good luck.
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BasicGreatGuy said:
I switched to APFS for my CCC backup and kept the TM backup as HFS+. With CCC, I wanted to be able to backup the recovery drive etc.

As to speed, I really haven't noticed a difference from when it was HFS+.

I am using a WD Passport (4TB) USB 3.0 drive.
Click to expand...

Direct-attached-storage TM users should be fine.
 
BasicGreatGuy said:
I switched to APFS for my CCC backup and kept the TM backup as HFS+. With CCC, I wanted to be able to backup the recovery drive etc.
Click to expand...

I'm still using HFS+ for my CCC backup and was able to back up the recovery partition with no issues.

Screenshot%202017-10-15%2009.29.56.png
 
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BasicGreatGuy said:
You misunderstood me. I converted my external HFS+ drive to APFS, because my system drive is APFS. It makes it easier with CCC.
Click to expand...

I understood you to say that you changed the backup destination drive for your iMac's internal APFS drive to APFS because that allowed you to backup the recovery drive as well.

I was just replying to say that I am backing up my iMac's internal APFS drive to an HFS+ volume and I had no problems backing up the recovery partition as well.

CCC fully supports backing up and restoring APFS drives to and from HFS+ volumes, as mentioned on the Bombich blog.

There is no benefit that I am aware of from having the backup volume in APFS as well.
 
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SaSaSushi said:
I understood you to say that you changed the backup destination drive for your iMac's internal APFS drive to APFS because that allowed you to backup the recovery drive as well.

I was just replying to say that I am backing up my iMac's internal APFS drive to an HFS+ volume and I had no problems backing up the recovery partition as well.

CCC fully supports backing up and restoring APFS drives to and from HFS+ volumes, as mentioned on the Bombich blog.

There is no benefit that I am aware of from having the backup volume in APFS as well.
Click to expand...

Using APFS do have benefit on the backup drive indeed.

I am also using HFS+ in my backup HDD at this moment. CCC clone my primary 1TB SSD to the backup 1TB HDD every day automatically. And this is what I get after clone.

Screen Shot 2017-10-15 at 13.33.36.jpg


Obviously, AFPS has different logic in counting the free space (this is actually one of the "improvement" in APFS). Since I am still using HFS+ on my backup drive, CCC occasionally throw me an error due to backup drive running out of space.
 
h9826790 said:
Using APFS do have benefit on the backup drive indeed.

Since I am still using HFS+ on my backup drive, CCC occasionally throw me an error due to backup drive running out of space.
Click to expand...

That would be a benefit of using APFS.

The weird thing is I am seeing exactly the opposite situation:

iMac SSD (APFS) 512GB, 292.03GB available
Backup Clone (HFS+) 512GB, 303.69GB available

Latest backup was 30 minutes ago.

Maybe you should write to Bombich about the errors.

I'd also be interested to find out if your problems are resolved by changing the backup volume to APFS.
 
SaSaSushi said:
That would be a benefit of using APFS.

The weird thing is I am seeing exactly the opposite situation:

iMac SSD (APFS) 512GB, 292.03GB available
Backup Clone (HFS+) 512GB, 303.69GB available

Latest backup was 30 minutes ago.

Maybe you should write to Bombich about the errors.

I'd also be interested to find out if your problems are resolved by changing the backup volume to APFS.
Click to expand...

Regardless HFS+ has more or less free space. For cloning (backup and recovery purpose), I think 1:1 scale is still a benefit.

In my case, the backup HDD may run out of space. In your case, if you really need to recover from HDD, the SSD may run out of space during recovery. If covert the backup HDD to AFPS can really fix the issue. IMO, it is actually a benefit.
 
BasicGreatGuy said:
You misunderstood me. I converted my external HFS+ drive to APFS, because my system drive is APFS. It makes it easier with CCC.
Click to expand...
I am not so sure I agree with you that having both as APFS makes it easier. It makes no difference whatsoever. The image is the image regardless of the format of the drive. When you restore, it is not bringing over the file system.

There is absolutely no reason at this point to have your attached back up drives formatted as APFS. Only High Sierra can read APFS, so you are out of luck if you wanted to read the drive with any older OS.
 
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After struggling with disk utility for cloning, I found a solution using dd / thunderbolt cable.

Boot into recovery. Open terminal via utilities menu.

diskutil list

Find external disk and internal disk (internal should be /dev/disk0). In the following dd command, add 'r', so /dev/rdisk0 instead of /dev/disk0 (for raw / faster access).

dd if=/dev/rdisk4 of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=524288

Change rdisk4 to the correct source volume (if=input file, of=output file). Large block size here is important for thunderbolt transfer speed (1.8 Mb/s to 250 Mb/s for me). Remember, this clones the whole disk, not a container or partition.

When complete, use the apple menu in recovery mode to set the startup disk.

This process worked for me with an encrypted APFS volume.
 
Just to clarify please. I currently have a 4k iMac with a 5400rpm HDD formatted APFS. Can I successfully clone to a Seagate SSHD formatted HFS+ ?

I intend to upgrade the internal 5400rpm HDD to the SSHD and I am asking this question as I have seen APFS does not work on Hybrid Drives. Is this correct ?

Thank you.
 
Guy Clark said:
Just to clarify please. I currently have a 4k iMac with a 5400rpm HDD formatted APFS. Can I successfully clone to a Seagate SSHD formatted HFS+ ?

I intend to upgrade the internal 5400rpm HDD to the SSHD and I am asking this question as I have seen APFS does not work on Hybrid Drives. Is this correct ?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can clone an APFS source to a HFS+ destination.

APFS can work on SSHD, just not Fusion Drive. They are completely different.

SSHD is just a normal HDD with a small SSD as cache (duplicated data from the HDD) to store the frequent access data for fast reading. All data is primarily stored on the HDD. And the "cache" is controlled by the hard drive onboard controller. The whole process is totally transparent to the OS.

Fusion Drive is an OS function that allow user to combine ANY two hard drives to form a larger single partition. The OS will automatically determine which hard drive is faster and use it primarily. When the faster hard drive is full, it will leave the frequent accessed data on the faster drive, and move the remaining data on the slower drive. BOTH hard drives will be used to store data, NO data duplication.

In general, a Fusion Drive will consist one SSD and one HDD. However, you can actually combine a PCIe SSD with a SATA SSD etc to from a Fusion Drive. The OS can still automatically use the PCIe SSD as the primary storage. This is an OS function, and not supported by APFS yet.
 
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