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"An Apple guy assured me that I can boot from my time machine backup if I have to."

Only half-true.
You can boot from the backup, but NOT to the finder.
That is to say, the backup can't be used in any other way except to boot and "restore".

With a cloned backup (created by CCC or SD), you:
- plug the backup in
- boot
- get to the finder
- work as you worked before (if necessary)
... or... restore one file, several files, or the entire drive.
Hhmm, that gets me thinking. My believe was, that the backup is a full blown system of my internal HD and I can essentially swap the back SSD with my with my internal if this one dies and I am done.
But maybe not . . .
Does CCC or SD make also constant automatic backups?
 
An Apple guy assured me that I can boot from my time machine backup if I have to.
Clone and Tm are different things and best solution would be to use both.

TM holds your "digital history", unless your TM backup drive is full.

If you delete or have bitrot in a file now and start to look for it next year, you won't find it in any clone between now and next year. But you will find it in TM.

You can't boot from TM backup, you have to use it to restore your system. That usually takes a whole day.

If you want to keep using the mac when storage dies, you need the clone. Which you might refresh once a week or month. Most of us don't want to use just clones, meaning that you would rotate one hundred of them to have some digital history in "clone archive".
 
Hhmm, that gets me thinking. My believe was, that the backup is a full blown system of my internal HD and I can essentially swap the back SSD with my with my internal if this one dies and I am done.
But maybe not . . .
Does CCC or SD make also constant automatic backups?
Yes in Paid versions!
 
OP wrote:
"Does CCC or SD make also constant automatic backups?"

Automated? I think so -- although I have no need for this.

Constant? I don't think so. Just automated (you set the time period).
Pray tell... why do you NEED "a constant" backup?
 
I just got a 1TB OWC SSD for my MacBook Pro Retina Mid-2012 (They sell sizes up to 2TB). I bought it initially because I thought there was no other options, but apparently Transcend sells a model 720 which is upto 960GB for the same price as OWC. Apparently OWC Clobbers them in google search results so I didn't see them outside of a recommendation here on these forums and in general, citing reliability and low failure rates compared to OWC. Imagine.

Anyway my gripes with the OWC going from Apple Factory Samsung SSD:

-Slow file writes for small files
-Slow finder indexing
-Even slower expanding from Archive(s) to Local SSD
-No S.M.A.R.T. Support!!!!
-No TRIM Support unless you force enable it. (Not recommended by OWC Themselves as they say it is not needed, I disagree.)
-Chugging random IO non-sequential read/writes. Chuggggg chug cchug.

I bought the 1TB, The NAND Configuration looks to be 256gb x4, And 256gb x8 on the 2TB Version which I would presume is slightly quicker if accessing large files across the device. But both are only around 500MB/s sequential.

It has 5 years warranty but I don't really feel like it will last that long,
The lack of SMART Counters makes me feel like OWC hasn't put a proper controller in the drive.
I haven't tried the Transcend but I hear they run cooler/faster, From anecdotal reports.

Do Transcend drives produce SMART Information, if anyone in this thread knows about them?

I feel like I should return the OWC but I am in Canada and its quite the hassle. I don't feel like their replacement drives, although physically compatible, are an equal replacement to the original Samsung SSD Parts.

It feels like these are not made well, and although suitable in an external USB Enclosures; not suggested as a system drive.
 
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I keep multiple backups on my Mac. Two Time Machine backups onto different drives and a periodic system clone, plus an off-site backup I do of critical items ever few months. I've been making bootable clones less and less as instantly bootable backups aren't critical for me -- I can afford to wait until a system restore off of Time Machine has completed, even if it takes several hours.

But what I do need is a larger volume for one of my TM volumes. One is a decently fast but smaller SSD connected via Thunderbolt, and the other is a larger but slower network volume down in the basement. I don't trust the network volumes enough for Time Machine (about once a year they somehow get corrupted and I must start over; hasn't happened with the directly connected drives), so I need to add a larger local SSD. I've got some mechanical HDDs that I could repurpose, but my system is so quiet these days that I would hate to add a noisy HDD to the room.
 
An Apple guy assured me that I can boot from my time machine backup if I have to.
You don't boot from a Time Machine Backup. You recover macOS and one in the setup Time Machine can restore the file on you Mac just the way it was. Time Machine is a great tool for backup's and how it works with APFS Snapshot feature. I have never had an issue with trying to recover from a Time Machine Backup.
 
Been using a crucial bx100 500gb ssd on a Mac mini 2012 since 2015 , until I upgraded to m2 Mac mini pro last month
Ssd still working fine
 
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