Back in the day, Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner was one of those must-have Mac apps. It was the first solution for making bootable backups to an external hard drive. Unfortunately, CCC had not been updated in quite some time (2003) and its former place has been taken on many Macs by the excellent SuperDuper! (which I use myself, but which runs $27.95). Mike has finally come out with an update for CCC, and has released a beta of version 3 of CCC. According to Mike, CCC3 was "completely rebuilt from the ground up to bring a new suite of features." Among these new features, are a revamped interface, network backups, "advanced scheduling capabilities" and more. Perhaps best of all, however, is that CCC3 is now a Universal application.Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0b4 is a free download, but Mike asks for donations. It looks like CCC3 could be a great, less expensive alternative to SuperDuper! once more.
[Via theappleblog]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-19-2007 @ 7:17PM
MxSix said...
I was just looking for a backup program today and came across CCC. How could I not have seen it before! Can't wait for the final release of version 3.
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2-20-2007 @ 2:58AM
Cintra said...
Hei
My instant reaction to "..excellent SuperDuper! (which I use myself, but which runs $27.95)" suggested to me this was expensive..
IMHO its about the best $28 spend a Mac user could possibly find!
Mvh
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2-20-2007 @ 4:56AM
DigitalFury said...
I currently use SD! but regardless of price which one is better now? SD! or CCC?
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2-20-2007 @ 5:02AM
bobics said...
SuperDuper! in its basic incarnation is free.
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2-20-2007 @ 10:40AM
Raffi said...
Sure SuperDuper! is free in it's basic form. But who in their right mind would use it regularly? There is no "smart update" (what they call synching) so you have to backup your entire drive every time. That would take far too long for me. I want to only update what needs to be updated on my drive, and delete what needs to be deleted. As far as I can tell CCC (the non-beta version) does this fine.
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2-20-2007 @ 11:51AM
Nate said...
CCC used to basically lock up my computer while it was doing its backup; SuperDuper doesn't. I see in the release notes, "A more responsive interface and the ability to stop the clone." That's a biggie! I may have to try it again.
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2-20-2007 @ 11:53AM
lipids said...
I have used CCC for years to move from one computer to another. Or to get a duplicate of my OS. I am excited to see that it is now a universal binary. Still, the interface, while modified, has not really been updated. A few elements have been moved around, like the advanced settings are now in the app menu. SuperDuper is really almost the same as CCC but costs $27.95. I figured if I am going to spend money, $30 for a ton more features than both programs put together would be my best bet. he winner in my opinion is ChronoSync. (and no, i do not work for them)
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2-20-2007 @ 4:24PM
Word Diggity said...
I'm VERY glad to see this update. I've been using SuperDuper since moving to Intel, and I'm not really happy with it. I'm only using the free version, which is limited in its usefulness. It's fast, and it works well (in its limited way), so I've been content to use it, but when I make a backup image of my hard drive I can't tell it to ignore the superfluous stuff - the system folder, the library, and all the invisible folders (/bin, /sbin, etc) - that I don't want in my backups. So my backup files (I backup to disk images on a specific hard drive) tend to be 30gb, when they should be about 9 or 10, tops. That means I have to delete older backups far more frequently than I'd like.
I realise that if I would pay for SD, it would do the things I want it to, but I'm cheap. :)
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2-20-2007 @ 5:36PM
Der Golem said...
Here's why I use CCC.
I work at a university audio-visual center. We have 7 mac laptops we check out to teachers.
I create one perfect system and use CCC to clone it to the other laptops.
Any changes I make to the system, I can reclone it in a jiffy.
I can also use CCC to restore a funked system (which has actually happened once.)
I don't have to know what it's doing, it just makes my job easier and my boss thinks I walk on water! Send Mike B. some money!
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