Time Machine vs Carbon Copy Cloner (or similar)

[Weaselboy]

(snip)...

I know you enjoy following me around with your pedantic little posts arguing about what "bootable" means, but it really adds nothing at all to the thread.

One can attach a TM disk made since 10.7.2 and option key boot to it and do a full restore. I have never made any claim one could run their system off a TM disk, so I have no clue why you are so bothered by this. Nobody is being mislead.

I clearly explained to the OP the pros/cons of TM vs. CCC and he seems to have figured out what he wants to do.

Any thinking person reading the thread can see the differences and decide which tool best meets their needs.

 

[boso]

Time Machine backs up everything, and it keeps multiple versions of files. If you ever need to restore your system, you can actually select which backup you want to restore in case something happened to your system and you want to restore from before that happened. Time Machine will maintain as much backup history as the disk will allow.

I and others recommend having 2 separate backup disks. Some people will recommend making one bootable clone (whatever software you prefer to use) and one Time Machine backup so you can easily recover older versions of files if necessary.

CCC Does the lot and you can boot from the backup.

 

[nebo1ss]

There is no need to spend any money on CCC. I am still running the free version 3.4.5 on Mavericks and it runs just fine.

Everytime I start it, it tells me that the version has not been qualified against Mavericks but it works perfectly.

I use both Time Machine and CCC. The reason I use CCC is that if I have a disk failure I can be up and running again in the time it takes to swop out the disk with the CCC clone. I can then update any files from Time machine that might have changed since my last CCC backup.

My Timemachine backup is on a NAS and obviously the CCC is on a 2.5 inch drive in an enclosure that can fit right into my Mac.