Carbon Copy Cloner 3

I'm wondering how CCC compares with Time Machine. I just started using CCC shortly before upgrading to Leopard. Should I stick with it, or switch to TM?

I wonder whether a carbon copy from a MacBook ( recently upgraded to Leopard ) will boot a 24" iMac ( still on Tiger ).
I will back the iMac up beforehand but my goal is to run all my apps on the iMac as they did on the MacBook. Migration Assistant on Steroids, that's the idea. Anyone care to comment ?

I'm preparing to upgrade my Macbook Pro to Leopard. In the past I had partitioned my internal drive for boot camp, but I no longer need it. I want to restore the internal drive to a single volume, but to do this with Disk Utility, I would have to wipe out the contents of both sides of the partition.

I have an external drive to backup my system to, but I'm still a bit unsure about how to restore my internal disk with a clone created with CCC. Will I need to erase and partition my external drive to boot from it? I'm just kindof nervous about wiping out my computer and relying on the external drive to bring it all back. Does anyone have any advice for me?

I use CCC from the first version and it is a life saver! when I perform on stage with my PB, I always have a clone on the side if something go wrong.

If you only want to backup some data, a lot of freewares are available but to clone exactly your startup drive, CCC IS the one to use. Besides, it's free and you can make a donation if you consider the worth of this piece of work ;)

How can the article claim "...This gem of an app is the easiest way to clone one Mac drive to another..." ???

The easiest way to do it is already built into every Mac:
/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility > Restore

It produces bootable clones with a single click. No downloading apps, no readme's to look at, free, well documented and comes included on every OS X boot disk and installation. There's even a CLI command 'asr' behind it to use for scripting.

I'm surprised how many people think they need something like CCC or SD when a bootable clone can be made for free on OS X machine with a simple click.

@3)

Chris, your problem is not so much USB vs Firewire or the drive itself, although I prefer Firewire drives for cloning. It is likely that the external hard drive (HD) enclosure you are using is not equipped with a chipset that is designed to do a full clone. This is the hardware inside the enclosure that connects your HD to the firewire or USB cables that run to your Mac.

I had the same issue before purchasing an external enclosure with what is called an "Oxford chipset". Without the Oxford chipsets you can still copy data to and from a drive but both Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner will hang part way through the backup if you attempt a complete clone.

Try dedicated Mac resellers like Other World Computing (www.macsales.com), G-Technology (www.g-technlogy.com), and Weibtech (www.Wiebetech.com) for such enclosures.

Once you get the right enclosure, using Super Duper on Smart Backup (as Dan mentioned) it takes only minutes to clone your drive. Super Duper is a great app.

:)

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...

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.

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.

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.