Why is Carbon Copy Cloner so slow?

[SheerGold]

Anyone know why?

Is there an alternative that is faster?

 

[overanalyzer]

I use Super Duper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper) and it works very well for me. There's a Smart Update feature available that makes updating clones very fast.

 

[Eidorian]

It takes a long time to copy many GB and thousands of files. What are you using it for?

 

[kfordham281]

How much are you backing up and how long is it taking? For a benchmark, SuperDuper can copy about 80GB on my drive in a little less than two hours. That's using Firewire 400. Using USB 2.0 will DEFINITELY be slower.

 

[eRondeau]

I have always found CCC to be very fast, especially compared to the Lacie Silverkeeper software I used to use. I admit I've never timed it, but I've done many backups over FW400 and now FW800. I'm no file system guru, but OS X is made up of about three-quarters-of-a-million files and most of them are very small. What takes the time, is not copying the data -- that's incredibly quick. What takes the time is creating a hundred-thousand little 1KB files, and directories, and keeping it all journalled, and updating Spotlight as you go. That's why incremental updates are so much faster -- because 99% of those little system files are not going to change. So basically, don't blame CCC -- blame OS X.