Filed under: Software
Carbon Copy Cloner 3
If you aren't using Carbon Copy Cloner, then you're missing out. This gem of an app is the easiest way to clone one Mac drive to another (you can even clone bootable volumes, so you can backup your main Mac drive to a stand by drive and boot right off of it). In addition to the clone ability, Carbon Copy Cloner makes backing up a breeze, and it is easier with Carbon Copy Cloner 3.
The new version of CCC brings with it better data synchronization, block level copying, and some nice UI enhancements.
Carbon Copy Cloner is donation-ware, so it is fully functional but if you use it you should really considering donating some cash to help with the development of the app.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MacBookOwner said 4:19PM on 9-18-2007
Scott,
what about a comparison between CCC3 and SuperDuper!?
Any reason to pick one over the other? (I've used SuperDuper!'s free version, haven't tried CCC3.)
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Luigi193 said 4:20PM on 9-18-2007
Ok, probably obvious question.
My macbook's internal just died. I got a 24'' imac. Can I dupe the whole HDD over to my macbook, and have it boot ok? It used the imac install DVD and my macbook uses a macbook install. WOuld copying the imac one over make OS X not work on my macbook? Will features like sudden motion detectors work? Any help would be nice.
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Chris Johnson said 4:26PM on 9-18-2007
I've always had real big problems trying to backup my Mac Mini onto a USB HD with any of the tools available for OS X. It always seems to die about 75% into the process. Do I need to buy a firewire drive?
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Jay said 4:26PM on 9-18-2007
Right on, I would also like to see a comparison with SuperDuper.
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Slevin said 4:49PM on 9-18-2007
@Luigi
Your internal HDD died? Does that mean your iMac can't read it? If so, if the drive is non-functional then there would be no way to copy the information off of the drive.
If you can get the information off of it then just copy your home folder(s) and place them on the MacBook. There would be somethings you can't copy over directly but I'd just copy over the documents, movies, music, pictures and desktop folders (if you had any files on your desktop) and then selectively copy folders out of the library such as application support, preferenes, sys prefs. Quicktime (for codecs) and mail (if you use apple mail)
good luck
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WillGonz said 4:29PM on 9-18-2007
I used CCC to backup my Macbook Pro. I did the bootable option. One day I had the external drive connected to my Mac Mini. Surprisingly it booted from the External drive and all my Apps were there and I could work with them just as I would on my MacBook Pro. Now the MBP does have better video and Processor but my apps still ran. A good safety net.
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Quix said 4:39PM on 9-18-2007
And can anyone compare CCC to ChronoSync? I've used ChronoSync (mostly) successfully, but the interface leaves much to be desired.
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Aron Trimble said 4:44PM on 9-18-2007
Besides ease of use the biggest difference in my mind between CCC and SD! is that SD! will do a “smart” backup. In other words, it will only backup the things that have changed, so your backup time is greatly reduced every night. My biggest desire for a backup solution? Versioning! Hopefully Time Machine will be all it’s hyped up to be… And maybe, just maybe time machine will create a bootable disk as well, now that would be NICE.
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Tony Barnhill said 4:48PM on 9-18-2007
When you boot from a Leopard DVD, one of your choices is "restore from Time Machine backup".
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James said 4:51PM on 9-18-2007
For those that don't need/want a bootable startup volume, won't Time Machine kinda-sorta make programs like these superflous.
Just sayin'.
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James said 4:53PM on 9-18-2007
And by "superflous" I mean backup/syncing programs. I can see why admin types would need cloned hard drives.
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Aron Trimble said 4:56PM on 9-18-2007
Having a cloned hard drive is a FANTASTIC thing that all mac users should have. Ask any Windows user how nice it would be to roll the clock back 24 hours simply by changing your startup volume!
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Jeffrey Bergier said 6:06PM on 9-18-2007
CCC will never be superfluous. TimeMachine only backs up your data. It does not clone anything. You cannot boot from a TimeMachine backup. You can restore a time machine backup, but not boot. CCC is brilliant if you ask it to backup a bootable copy of everything to an external drive when you go to sleep at night. then if your hard drive dies one day in the middle of work, you just restart your mac holding Option to boot from the external drive. As for using one copy of OSX on multiple macs... works perfectly. Every copy of OSX has every copy of every driver that is in a Mac that is officially supported by that version of OSX. IE, you can boot from a PowerMac G3 to a PowerBook G4 no problem... with the same OS as long as it supports both the G3 and G4... Tiger does. The only hangup to this is you cannot image from an Intel Mac to a PPC mac or vice versa. But going from an Intel iMac Core Duo to a MacBook Pro Core2Duo Santa Rosa with the newest OSX will present no problems.
I love CCC, use it every day
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Derek F. said 6:11PM on 9-18-2007
CCC is a life-saver. I used v2 to clone my iMac G4 once a week. About 3 months ago, we had a black-out and after running over 5 years 24/7, it didn't come back up after the power-outage. I walked into the local Apple Store, picked up an iMac Dual Core, plugged in the external hard drive and had every back on my Mac and available in the time it took to copy it over. Only lost a couple hours of work from that day and didn't have to wait days for repair or recovery. Can't complain when something "just works"
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Luigi193 said 7:09PM on 9-18-2007
Selvin, I am getting a new HDD, so thats what I will be copying over to...
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Dan Riley said 7:11PM on 9-18-2007
CCC makes you copy everything EVERY TIME.
This takes much longer than necessary.
Use SuperDuper in the "smart" mode and after the first time,
it will only copy things that have changed or were added.
A backup typically takes 5 minutes or less per night.
And SD has timers you can set to do it automatically.
The scripts are easy to set up.
My preference is SuperDuper.
Dan
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5cents said 7:22PM on 9-18-2007
Someone asked for versioning. If you purchase a NewerTech drive (well I can only confirm the ministacks) they come with ProSoft's Backup 3 which offers versioning. The interface isn't that great and I found it somewhat buggy when using the smart backup feature but still... it's free with purchase. That said, I use the free version of SD! and will be upgrading to the paid version shortly. The interface is incredibly simple to use. If CCC offered smart updating and remained free, it would likely obsolete SD! paid version or at the very least, force it too to become free.
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Theo Lotz said 9:54PM on 9-18-2007
Can you use CCC from a Mac Mini to an external USB drive? I have tried a couple products and cannot seem to get the clone to ever complete. I realize I can't boot from it (i'd have to open her up and swap drives), but I'm just looking for a confirmation that someone has successfully cloned over USB and it worked when you tried to boot from that drive later.
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Andrew said 8:21PM on 9-18-2007
Looks like the smart copy is now built in - from the CCC 3 help:
You may also notice that cloning your entire hard drive every time you back up your data takes a lot longer than it should. Why not just copy the items that have changed since the last backup? This functionality is a standard feature of Carbon Copy Cloner 3.
When you want to copy a selection of data from your hard drive, use CCC's "Copy selected items" option. Likewise, if you want to only copy the items that have changed since a previous backup, use CCC's "Copy selected items" option.
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James said 8:21PM on 9-18-2007
My need to clone is zero because I have a desktop and a laptop: if one dies, I'll just use the other. The main issue then becomes keeping the two in sync, which (AFAIK) is not a strength of either SD or CCC (especially when cloning is impossible as one hard drive is signficantly larger than the other).
I can see the value of a cloned bootable if you have a single machine, but it seems like overkill if you already have a working "backup" computer. Perhaps I'm missing something...
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