Carbon Copy Cloner Documentation

Carbon Copy ClonerDocumentation

© Mike Bombich, Bombich Software, LLC 2002-2009www.bombich.com/software/ccc

Carbon Copy Cloner Documentation http://bombich.com/software/docs/CCCHelp/CCCHelp.html?page=toc

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Carbon Copy Cloner Overview

System Requirements

Mac OS 10.4.8 or higher

Supported configurations

HFS+ formatted partition or hard driveFirewire and USB hard drives including iPods*CCC will not backup directly to optical mediaCCC is supported only on machines that officially support Mac OS X Tiger (or higher)

* Not all firewire hard drives are capable of booting Mac OS X. Check with the manufacturer of your drive to verify that booting from thedrive is explicitly supported. iPods must be enabled for disk use. iPods are not recommended for general use as a bootable drive, andUSB-based iPods may not boot every model of Macintosh. In general, only Intel-based Macs can boot from USB hard drives and thatsuccess is not guaranteed. PowerPC Macs can only boot from a hard drive partitioned with the APM partitioning scheme. See theFrequently Asked Questions section of the CCC documentation for more information on disk formatting and partitioning. Theserestrictions apply to the ability of the device to boot a Mac, any of these devices are suitable for general backup.

Installing Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is distributed via a disk image -- all documentation and required components are contained within the application onthis disk image. You may copy CCC to your Applications or Utilities folder, or anywhere else you prefer. CCC must be installed on a volumethat supports the "setuid" bit. Your boot volume should always work, and most external Firewire or USB volumes will typically work. CCC willnot function properly if it is located within a FileVault home directory, a disk image, or on a network filesystem.

Basic Cloning

In its simplest form, CCC can clone one hard drive to another, copying every single file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive.This is very useful if, for example, your laptop is damaged and you must send it in for repair. Apple recommends that you backup your databefore sending it in for repairs because they are not responsible for lost data. With CCC, simply attach an empty firewire hard drive to yourlaptop and clone your entire internal drive to the firewire hard drive. While your laptop is out for repair, you can boot another system from thefirewire hard drive and continue to use your configuration as if booted from your laptop. When your computer returns from repair, simplyrestore your firewire hard drive back to the laptop's internal drive and you're ready to continue on with life. No data lost, not an icon out ofplace.

Using CCC for general backup

CCC can also be used to perform regular backups of your data. When you select a source volume in CCC, you are presented with the contentsof that volume (hidden items too). Simply uncheck the items that you do not want to backup, and CCC will provide ample indication what willand will not be copied. Select a target volume to which you would like to backup, then press the clone button. You have the option to deleteitems on the target that are not on the source, or simply leave them alone. You also have the option to send your files to another Macintoshon your network. CCC will first scan the source and target volumes for the files to be copied, then will copy only the files that have changed.That's a powerful backup!

Scheduling tasks for automated backup

The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to a human, the task often gets tacked on to the end ofa very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a catastrophe, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling -- you just lostsix years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regularbackups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer. CCC includes that functionality, and takes it two steps further.

Backups only work when the computer is awake. If you're a mobile user, the scheduled backup task often does not occur (say your laptop is ina briefcase at the time) or it occurs at an inopportune time, consuming hard drive bandwidth that you simply can't afford. CCC solves thisproblem by allowing you to defer the scheduled task to a time that you know the computer will be on and idle. If the machine is asleep whenthe task is scheduled to occur, the task will run upon wake. Bad time? Reschedule to any time, any day.

What happens when your scheduled backup starts but your external hard drive doesn't happen to be attached? Usually you just miss thatbackup attempt and you wind up playing Russian Roulette with your backup. CCC solves this too. If your backup hard drive is unavailablewhen the task is scheduled to occur (perhaps you're listening to tunes on your iPod at the time), CCC will immediately run the backup whenyou reattach your hard drive.

Restoring your data from a backup

Carbon Copy Cloner uses tools built-in to the operating system to back up your data and clone your hard drive. Rather than using proprietaryarchival methods, CCC backs up your data to an ordinary filesystem that you can browse in the Finder or to a standard disk image like thoseyou download over the Internet. Need to restore a file? Simply browse your backup device and copy the file right in the Finder. If you backed


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up to a disk image, just mount the disk image and locate the file. If you would like to restore an entire volume, the procedure is exactly thesame as it was for creating your original backup: use Carbon Copy Cloner. To restore, simply select your backup as the source and thereplacement drive as your new target. CCC also creates bootable backups so you also have a "rescue" drive at hand should something happento your original.

Working with FileVault home directories

FileVault protects the contents of your home directory by enclosing it in an encrypted disk image. When you log in, the encrypted disk imageis unlocked via your login and password and mounted for use as your home directory. Mounted disk images pose an interesting problem toincremental backup utilities. By simply being mounted and accessed (e.g. via browsing the contents), the content of a disk image, and thusthe disk image file itself, is modified. If you run CCC while logged in to a FileVault-protected account, there is a strong chance that theFileVault disk image will be modified while it is being backed up, resulting in a corrupted version of the disk image on your backup volume.Also, because the contents of your FileVault-protected home directory are technically on another volume, CCC will not back up the contentsof your home directory when backing up your root filesystem (e.g. your boot drive).

For these reasons, you should either exclude your FileVault disk image file from your backup routine while logged into a FileVault-protectedaccount (and set up a separate routine for backing up the contents of your home directory), or you should only run CCC while logged into anaccount that is not protected by FileVault.

What settings are right for me?

Carbon Copy Cloner is packed with many different features. To learn what features and options to use for your particular situation, readthrough the usage scenarios described in the document titled "Usage Scenarios for Carbon Copy Cloner".

What does CCC cost?

Carbon Copy Cloner doesn't cost you a dime until you completely trust it. That's the way all backup software should work -- pay when youreally feel confident that it's going to do the job that it claims. CCC is "uncrippled" shareware, meaning that all features are available whetheryou've paid or not. No registration is ever required, but once you trust it, a small donation is appreciated for continued development. Choose"Donate to Bombich Software" from CCC's Help menu to send a donation or use the link below. Thanks!

Note: You may have noticed that there is now a sponsorship banner at the bottom of the cloning status panel while CCC is running. I knowwhat you're thinking, it's an abomination! Right? Well, whenever I post updates to CCC, my bandwidth costs go through the roof. I havechosen to subsidize these costs with banner placements from sponsors that I know and trust. I also introduced the banners as unobtrusivelyas possible -- in a location and at a time that shouldn't affect your use of CCC.

You can make the banners go away by sending in a donation! Simply click on the "I paid" button in the Donation dialog and the banners willno longer appear. If you're affiliated with an Education institution, please click on the "I paid" button *without* sending in a donation(seriously).

License

View the license for CCC


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What to do when you need help with Carbon Copy Cloner The goal of this section of the documentation is not to answer the "How do I do <blank>?" questions, rather it is to offer some advice on thechoices you may make when configuring your backup solution. Consider the following as advice, not rules, individual requirements certainlyvary.

How frequent should my backups be?

I find hourly backups to be very intrusive. If I did decide to do hourly backups, I might choose to back up a smaller subset of files (e.g. vs. theentire filesystem) so the backups occur very quickly. Otherwise, I'd just set the system to back up when I'm not using the system. Myproduction machine backs up once a day at 5:30.

Feel free to experiment with the frequency of the backup to see what works best for you. I've decided that the risk of failure on any given dayis low enough that I'd rather not have it interfere with my productivity. If an hourly backup were to cause me a minute or two of productivityloss per run (via distraction, having to wait, or generally slowing me down), that would start to add up quickly. Eventually it would outweighthe four hours of work I might lose if one day my drive failed at noon.

Performance suggestions

When backing up using the "Incremental backup of selected items" method, you'll notice that CCC will first scan the source volume to build alist of items it should consider for backing up. If you have a particularly high number of files on your source volume, you may want to putsome thought into how your files are organized. For example, if you have a large number of files that never change (perhaps some old,completed projects), you can collect these into a folder named "Archives", back it up once, then exclude it from future backups. CCC will notdelete excluded items from your target volume, so as long as you keep the original on your source volume, you will always have two copies ofyour archived content. Because these items are excluded from your daily backups, CCC will not spend time or RAM enumerating throughthose files for changes.

Getting additional help

When you encounter a problem, need clarification, or are unsure what to do, you should consult the online help to see if your question isanswered there. In particular, check out the Frequently Asked Questions section. If you don't find what you need in the online help, visit theBombich Software forums and search for answers there. The forums are our primary avenue of providing support -- they best allow us toprovide one-to-many help, build a knowledge base, and identify trends of usage and problems. If you are unable to get the help you need inthe forums, or if you have identified a reproducible error condition, submit a problem report via CCC's Help menu. When you submit aproblem report, the developers at Bombich Software will attempt to reproduce the problem and find a resolution. If further clarification isrequired, we will contact you via email.


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What can I do with Carbon Copy Cloner?

I want to clone my entire hard drive to a new hard drive or a new machine

There are many different reasons to make an exact clone of your hard drive. Suppose your laptop is damaged and you must send it in forrepair. In the meantime, you not only have to borrow another computer for the duration of the repair, you also don't have your data,applications and work environment exactly as they were on your machine. This lack of organization can be very frustrating and inhibit yourproductivity. When you get your machine back from repair, you have to deal with locating any modified documents on your loaner computerand copying them to your original computer. Also, Apple recommends that you backup your data before sending in a machine for repairsbecause they are not responsible for lost data.

In this situation, it would be ideal to simply copy off the entire contents of your hard drive to an external hard drive -- to create a "bootableclone" of your production machine. You can then boot a loaner machine from this bootable clone and work from it as if working from youroriginal machine.*

* Some of your preferences on Mac OS X are considered "host-specific." Preferences such as these will be ignored if you boot your clonedoperating system and data from another machine. For example, the screen saver preferences are host-specific -- if you boot anothermachine from your bootable clone and the screen saver kicks in, you will notice that it has reverted to default settings. Do not fear thatyou have lost any data, your original preferences will be "restored" when you boot again from your original computer.

To learn exactly what preferences are host-specific, navigate in the Finder to your home directory, then to Library/Preferences/ByHost.

Another common scenario appropriate for cloning is when you have purchased a new computer and you would like to move the entireinstallation to your new machine. In the past, using CCC for this type of procedure was usually fine. There were and are caveats**, but usuallythis went quite well. With Apple's transition to the Intel processor, however, it is very common for people to want to migrate from an olderPowerPC-based machine to a new Intel-based machine. The version of Mac OS X Tiger that is available for PowerPC machines, however, willnot boot the new Intel-based Macintoshes. Therefore, you are encouraged to use the built-in Migration Assistant as prompted when you firstboot your new computer. If you are migrating a PowerPC machine to a PowerPC machine, or migrating an Intel-based machine to anIntel-based machine, then, respecting caveats listed below, a basic clone is an ideal way to migrate from one machine to another.

** Don't install older versions of Mac OS than what comes with your computer

When you get a brand new Mac from Apple, it usually has a specific version of Mac OS X installed on it. If you install an older version ofthe OS, for example by cloning your older Mac to it, then it may behave unexpectedly. When migrating your old Mac to your new Mac, besure that your old Mac has been updated to at least one later release than what came on the new Mac. For example, if your new Mac camewith 10.4.7, update your old Mac to 10.4.8 before migrating. If such an update is not available, use the Migration Assistant instead.

Apple Kbase #25497: Don't install older versions of Mac OS than what comes with your computerApple Kbase #25784: What's a "computer-specific Mac OS X release"?

When you need a complete, simple backup of your entire hard drive, use Carbon Copy Cloner's "Backup everything" option.

I want to backup my important data or synchronize my backup drive to my boot drive

While a complete and bootable clone of your hard drive can be very useful in case of emergencies, it is often desirable to maintain a morefrequently updated backup of your most important data in multiple locations. In general, it is wise to always maintain at least three copies ofthe data that is most important to you: the original, a nearby backup, and an "offsite" backup -- something that is kept outside of your homeor office in case something terrible happened where you regularly use your computer. Carbon Copy Cloner 3 has been enhanced to provideadditional functionality for facilitating this type of backup plan.

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 copythe 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 "Incremental backup of selected items" option. Likewise, if youwant to only copy the items that have changed since a previous backup, use CCC's "Incremental backup of selected items" option.

I want to backup my important data to another Macintosh on my network

Storing your backup on a locally attached hard drive certainly offers speed and space benefits, but if you'd like to store the backups for oneor several machines in a central location, or even offsite, then being able to directly backup to another Macintosh on your network isparamount.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3 offers the option of securely copying your selected data to another Macintosh on your network (or anywhere on theInternet for that matter). After a brief setup procedure to establish trust between your machine and the target machine, simply indicate the IPaddress or hostname of the machine to which you have access and CCC will take care of the rest.

When you want to copy a selection of data from your hard drive to or from a remote Macintosh, use CCC's "Incremental backup of selecteditems" option, and choose the "Remote Machine..." option from the Target menu. Likewise, if you want to only copy the items that havechanged since a previous backup, use CCC's "Incremental backup of selected items" option.

I want to backup multiple machines to the same hard drive, each to its own disk image on the drive

Sometimes backing up your data to a single external hard drive is just too messy and difficult to organize. Suppose, for example, that you


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have three computers in your household, and everyone backs up to the same firewire hard drive. Where do you put each person's backup?The single hard drive can't maintain multiple operating systems, Mac OS X does not support that. You could split the drive into threepartitions, but that isn't very flexible at all. You could clone each person's drive to a folder on the drive, but that's a little difficult to restorefrom.

A very good solution in a scenario such as this is to use disk images as the medium of your backup. A disk image is a single file residing onyour hard drive that contains the entire contents of another hard drive (except for the free space). When you want to access the contents ofthat filesystem, you double-click on the disk image to mount the disk image as if it were an external drive attached to the machine. CarbonCopy Cloner 3 leverages disk images to provide you the flexibility of storing several complete, bootable*** backups on a single sharedexternal hard drive. (*** Disk images themselves are not bootable, but you can mount them and restore their content to a physical hard driveto produce a bootable, exact replica of the original).

When you want to copy the entire contents or a selection of data from your hard drive to a disk image, select "New disk image..." or "Choosedisk image..." from the target menu. If you want to restore a drive from a disk image backup, boot from a drive other than the target, select"Restore from disk image..." from the source menu and locate the disk image. Choose the drive to which you would like to restore from thetarget menu.

I want my backup task to run automatically on a scheduled basis

It takes a person of strong resolution to manually back up data frequently enough to prevent a catastrophic loss. For the rest of us, there'stask scheduling. Carbon Copy Cloner offers hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling. If your workstyle is too hectic for scheduling, youcan also schedule a task to run whenever your backup hard drive is attached to your computer.

To schedule a backup task, first configure CCC as if you were going to run a backup task immediately. Instead of clicking on the Clonebutton, click on the "Save Task" button. In the Scheduler window that appears, provide a name for the scheduled task and indicate when youwant the task to run.


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Using Carbon Copy Cloner to backup selected items on your computer andto synchronize disks

When you want to copy a selection of files to another drive or disk image, you use the "Incremental backup of selected items" option in CCC.This is a really easy way to make a backup of just the files that are important to you, which can be particularly important if your target drive istight on space. This option also offers a speed advantage -- only the files that have changed will be copied to the target drive. For day today incremental backups, this is the ideal method for backing up your data and your boot volume.

Configuring what items should be copied (or not)

When you choose a disk in the source menu, and the "Incremental backup of selected items" option is selected, the "Items to be copied" tablepopulates with the contents of that volume. Each file and folder has a checkbox next to it -- unchecking a checkbox indicates that you do notwant that item copied to your backup drive. You will also notice that each folder has a disclosure triangle, just like in the Finder. Click on thedisclosure triangle to reveal the contents of a folder, then you can continue deselecting items to be copied, if desired. CCC will not allow youto navigate beyond the folders for which you have permission to view. Additionally, if you deselect an item that is required for Mac OS X toboot, CCC will indicate that the target volume will not be bootable. Your target volume will be bootable as long as it meets the bootabilityrequirements and you select to copy all required system files.

Bootability verification

CCC determines whether your target volume will be bootable and indicates this beneath the "Cloning Options" section. To qualify as"bootable", the following requirements must be met:

The target volume cannot be a disk image -- you cannot boot your Macintosh from a disk image.The source and target volumes must be local volumes -- CCC cannot determine the bootability of a remote volume.If the Macintosh is a PowerPC Macintosh, the target device must be an internal volume or on a Firewire hard drive. Intel Macintoshescan boot from either an internal volume, a Firewire hard drive, or a USB hard drive.The files and folders required by Mac OS X must be present on the source volume. These include: /Library, /System, /Users, /bin, /etc,/mach_kernel, /private, /sbin, /tmp, /usr, and /var.The files and folders that are required by Mac OS X must be selected to be copied to the target volume (applicable only to the"Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method).

What is the "Gear" menu for?

The popup menu next to the source menu that has a gear icon is a contextual filters menu. That menu is enabled when you have selected alocal volume or disk image in the source menu. In short, filters are created automatically for you when you deselect items in the "Items to becopied" table. You can edit filters and save customized filters for future use, as well as add file type filters and custom rules. Filters areexplained in more detail in this section of CCC Help.

Options to the "Incremental backup of selected items" method

"Delete files that don't exist on the source"

By default, the "Incremental backup of selected items" method will copy the selected items to your target drive, copying only the items thathave changed and leaving in place any files on the target that do not exist on the source. Essentially, the two drives are merged onto the


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target. Often when you back up your data, however, you also want to delete items on the backup that have been deleted on your source harddrive. Select the "Delete files that don't exist on the source" option if you would like items that have been deleted on the source to be deletedfrom the target.

"Protect root-level target items"

Not everyone has a hard drive that can be completely dedicated to the task of backing up a single volume. If you have content on your backupvolume that you do not want deleted, yet you want to keep your backup "clean", use the "Protect root-level target items" option. For example,suppose you have these items on your source volume:

ApplicationsLibrarySystemTax Records (This year)Users

And you have these items on the target volume:

DocumentsOlder Tax RecordsPhotos 1976-2001Tax Records (This year)

With the "Incremental backup of selected items" method plus the "Delete files that don't exist on the source" option, the Documents, Photos1976-2001, and Older Tax Records directories would be erased completely (bad!*), and the Tax Records (This year) directory would beupdated to exactly match the Tax Records (This year) directory on the source (probably a good thing). By adding the "Protect root-level targetitems" option, the Documents, Older Tax Records and Photos 1976-2001 directories are left untouched because they are unique to the targetvolume. The Tax Records (This year) directory, however, is still updated to match the Tax Records (This year) directory on the source. Whenyour goal is to keep an up to date backup without older cruft, that's an ideal scenario.

* Granted, they should be backed up at least one other place if they are important, right?

"Archive modified and deleted items"

In the event that you accidentally delete a file and don't notice until after your scheduled backup has occurred, you are typically out of luck --the file is deleted from your backup (when using the "Delete items that don't exist on the source" option). With the "Archive modified anddeleted items" option, deleted items are not deleted from the backup, rather they are moved to a time-stamped folder at the root level ofyour backup volume. Should you ever need to recover a long-ago deleted file, or simply the version of a file before last week's major revision,simply navigate to the root level of your backup volume and find the folder named with the date that the backup occurred.

What happens to data already on the target drive?

If you already have data on your target drive, the "Incremental backup of selected items" method will only delete those items if:

You have selected the "Delete files that don't exist on the source" option and1.The file does not exist on the source2.

If a file exists on the source and target at the same path (e.g. /Users/bob/Desktop/file.txt and /Volumes/Backup/Users/bob/Desktop/file.txt), then the file on the target volume will be overwritten if it is older than the file on the source. Otherwise it will be left untouched.

Additionally, directories whose names begin with _CCC on the target will never be deleted while using the "Incremental backup of selecteditems" cloning method. These items will only be deleted if you have selected the "Delete files that don't exist on the source" option and you'reusing the "Backup everything" cloning method. Special handling of items at the root level of the target volume are described in the "Protectroot-level target items" section above.

How do I restore files backed up using the "Incremental backup of selected items" method?

If you need to restore just a file or handful of files, simply browse the backup drive in the Finder and copy those items back to your originaldrive to restore them. If you need to restore many files using CCC, select the drive that you backed up to as the source, select your originaldrive as the target, then proceed as you did when you originally backed up your drive. Carefully consider the "Delete files that don't exist onthe source" option; if there are other important files on the volume you're restoring to, you don't want to accidentally erase them. Also, youmay deselect the root of a volume in the "Items to be copied" table, then re-select only a few items to limit what items are restored. Note thatyou cannot select the boot drive as the target, you will need to boot from another drive if you need to restore directly to your boot drive.


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What else can I do with the "Incremental backup of selected items" method?

In addition to backing up your data or synchronizing one volume to another, CCC also allows you to back up selected files to a disk imageand to back up selected files to another computer on your network.


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Using Carbon Copy Cloner to create an exact clone of your hard drive Carbon Copy Cloner's most basic and revered task is to create a "carbon copy" bootable clone of a hard drive. CCC 3 takes this to a new levelwith Apple Software Restore, a low-level tool developed by Apple and built-in to Mac OS X. Apple Software Restore is the most highlyregarded tool for performing disk to disk clones, and Carbon Copy Cloner brings all the functionality and more to your desktop. To clone ahard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, use the "Backup everything" method listed under Cloning options:

The "Backup everything" method will attempt a block-level clone of your source volume if you have indicated to "Delete items from the targetthat don't exist on the source". If you have not selected that option, or if a block-level clone cannot proceed (see below), this cloning methodwill perform a file-level copy of everything on the source volume to the target volume. If the target volume already contains some of thecontent of the source volume (e.g. from a previous backup), that content will be efficiently updated. The end result in both cases is an exact,bootable backup of your source volume.

Options to the "Backup everything" method

This cloning method has one option: Whether to delete items from the target that don't exist on the source prior to cloning. This option isimportant to consider when your goal is to create a bootable clone -- read the gray box at the bottom to understand how this option affectsyour clone.

Block-level copies vs. file-level copies

Cloning an entire hard drive to another drive can be achieved in two ways: 1) Copying every file individually from one volume to the other or2) Copying the underlying blocks from one hard drive to the other. These two methods are called "file-level copying" and "block-levelcopying", respectively. While each method produces functionally the same result, block-level copying is almost always significantly faster thanfile-level copying, and is therefore the preferred method for disk to disk clones.

To benefit from a block-level copy, the following criteria must be met:

You must choose to "Delete items from the target that don't exist on the source" during the clone.1.You must be able to unmount both devices (there cannot be any open files on either drive and you cannot be booted from eitherdrive). Do not actually unmount the drives prior to the clone.

2.

The target drive must be at least as large as the source drive.3.

If any of these criteria are not met, CCC will automatically fall back to a file-level clone. A file-level clone will yield the same result -- abootable clone (assuming you didn't merge two operating systems), but it will take a little longer.

While a block-level clone is rarely required to insure the fidelity of your backup, some people find comfort in the fact that, block-for-block,the resulting target is precisely like the original (this is simply impossible with a file-level clone). When possible, CCC will always prefer ablock-level clone. However, don't lose sleep if meeting the requirements for a block-level clone is untenable for your particular backup orcloning situation. The file-level backup engine in CCC has been tuned and honed to bring the best performance and fidelity possible amongMac OS X backup utilities.

Do I need to clone, or just backup?

Often people clone when all they really need is a backup. When you clone a volume, every file is copied, and this can take a fair amount oftime. If you just recently backed up your entire drive, use the "Incremental backup of selected items" method to backup your data instead.That method copies only the items that have changed, thus your backup is much faster. If you're moving to a new hard drive, cloning yourmachine prior to repair, etc. then the cloning method is the right choice for you.


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Bootability verification

CCC determines whether your target volume will be bootable and indicates this beneath the "Cloning Options" section. To qualify as"bootable", the following requirements must be met:

The target volume cannot be a disk image -- you cannot boot your Macintosh from a disk image.The source and target volumes must be local volumes -- CCC cannot determine the bootability of a remote volume.If the Macintosh is a PowerPC Macintosh, the target device must be an internal volume or on a Firewire hard drive. Intel Macintoshescan boot from either an internal volume, a Firewire hard drive, or a USB hard drive.The files and folders required by Mac OS X must be present on the source volume. These include: /Library, /System, /bin, /etc,/mach_kernel, /private, /sbin, /tmp, /usr, and /var.The files and folders that are required by Mac OS X must be selected to be copied to the target volume (applicable only to the"Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method).If the Macintosh is a PowerPC Macintosh, the hard drive on which the target resides must be partitioned using the Apple Partition Map.Intel-based Macintoshes ship with hard drives formatted with the GPT (GUID Partition Table) format, and will not boot a PowerPCMacintosh.

What else can I do with the "Backup everything" method?

In addition to cloning one volume to another, CCC also allows you to clone a volume to a disk image.

How do I restore files backed up using the "Backup everything" method?

If you need to restore just a file or handful of files, simply browse the backup drive in the Finder and copy those items back to your originaldrive to restore them. If you need to restore a larger subset of files, but not the entire volume, click here to learn how to restore files with the"Incremental backup of selected items" option.

To restore an entire volume, for example your boot volume after a disk failure, you will need to boot from an external firewire hard drive.Ideally, you will simply boot from the firewire hard drive that you backed up to using CCC. Launch CCC, select the drive that you backed up toas the source, select your original (or replacement) drive as the target, choose to "Backup everything", then clone. If the target drive must bebootable, you must use the "Delete items from the target that don't exist on the source" option (see below for the explanation).

Why must you erase the target volume prior to a restore to make it bootable?Back in the Mac OS 9 days, it was OK to have multiple operating systems on the same hard drive or partition. With Mac OS X, that is nolonger the case. Additionally, it is not a simple task to merge one OS with another. Not only is there the potential for conflicts if the OSversions are different, but you also run into the potential to corrupt the user accounts database. You may use either the "Backupeverything" or "Incremental backup of selected items" cloning methods, though to ensure that the resulting volume is bootable, you mustuse each method's associated option to delete items on the target.


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Using Carbon Copy Cloner to backup to and restore from disk images Sometimes backing up your data to a single external hard drive is just too messy and difficult to organize. Suppose, for example, that youhave three computers in your household, and everyone backs up to the same firewire hard drive. Where do you put each person's backup?The single hard drive can't maintain multiple operating systems, Mac OS X does not support that. You could split the drive into threepartitions, but that isn't very flexible at all. You could clone each person's drive to a folder on the drive, but that's a little difficult to restorefrom.

A very good solution in a scenario such as this is to use disk images as the medium of your backup. A disk image is a single file residing onyour hard drive that contains the entire contents of another hard drive (except for the free space). When you want to access the contents ofthat filesystem, you double-click on the disk image to mount the disk image as if it were an external drive attached to the machine. CarbonCopy Cloner 3 leverages disk images to provide you the flexibility of storing several complete, bootable* backups on a single shared externalhard drive. (* Disk images themselves are not bootable, but you can mount them and restore their content to a physical hard drive to producea bootable, exact replica of the original).

Backing up to a new disk image

After choosing a source volume from the Source Disk popup menu, choose "New disk image..." from the Target Disk popup menu. Provide aname and choose a location to save your disk image. If you plan to back up to this disk image again in the future, select the option to "Createa read/write sparse disk image". If you want a read-only disk image for archival purposes, choose the option to "Create a read-only diskimage". Note that if you schedule a task in which you create a new image, CCC will recreate the image every time the task runs. See theBacking up to an existing (read/write) disk image section below for a more appropriate choice for scheduling backups to a disk image.

Read/write "sparse" disk imagesA sparse disk image is a type of read/write disk image that grows as you copy files to it. In general, sparse disk images only consume asmuch space as the files they contain consume on disk, making this an ideal format for storing backups.

Read-only disk imagesWhen creating a read-only disk image, you have two additional options. If your target disk is short on space, you can compress the diskimage. Compression rates vary on the content of your source, but you can typically expect to reduce the size of your disk image by about halfwhen using compression. There is a subtle behavior that you should take note of when considering this option as a space-saving measure:When using the "Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method, CCC will first create a read/write disk image, copy the selected itemsto it, then convert the disk image to read-only compressed. In this case, you will actually need twice the space on your target as the items tobe copied consume on the source. When using the "Backup everything" cloning method, this limitation does not apply, CCC will create aread-only compressed disk image in one step.

The second option allows you to segment the disk image. This option is ideal if, for example, you intend to burn the segments to opticalmedia.* Like with the compression option, CCC will also create a temporary read-write disk image -- not segmented -- when using the"Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method.

* To mount a segmented disk image, all segments must be present on the same media. Burning disk image segments to optical media is agreat archival practice, just keep in mind that should you ever need to restore from that backup, you will first need to copy all segments ontoa volume with adequate capacity.

Encrypting disk imagesIf any of the data that you are backing up is sensitive, and if your backup device may be in an insecure location, it is a good idea to enableencryption when backing up to a disk image. CCC uses 128 bit AES encryption to encrypt disk images. Note: CCC does not currently supportencryption during scheduled tasks.

Backing up to an existing (read/write) disk image

If you regularly make backups to a disk image, this is the option you will want to choose when choosing a target disk. After choosing a sourcevolume from the Source Disk popup menu, choose "Choose disk image..." from the Target Disk popup menu. In the Open dialog box,navigate to and select your disk image and click the OK button. After clicking on the Clone button, CCC will mount the disk image andbackup your data as if it were any other backup device.

When backing up to an existing disk image, be sure to choose a disk image that is writable. If you choose a sparse disk image that CCCcreated in a previous backup, CCC can be configured to copy everything again, overwriting data on the disk image, or to copy only the itemsthat have changed. A sparse image will grow as data is copied to it.

Restoring from a disk image

To restore files or an entire filesystem from a disk image, simply select "Restore from disk image" from the Source Disk popup menu andlocate your backup disk image. CCC will mount the disk image and you may then proceed with the restore procedure using either the"Incremental backup of selected items" or "Backup everything" cloning method. If you want to restore your disk image to your boot volume, orif you need to restore a disk image and you do not have a bootable volume available, you can boot from your Mac OS X Installer DVD and useDisk Utility to restore the disk image:

Reboot your computer from the Mac OS X Installer DVD1.After the Installer application loads, choose "Disk Utility" from the Utilities menu2.From the File menu, choose "Open Disk Image..." and locate the disk image that you would like to restore3.In the list in the pane on the left, click on the mounted disk image's volume4.Click on the "Restore" tab on the right side of the window5.Drag the mounted disk image to the Source field6.Drag the hard drive that you would like to restore to into the "Destination" field7.Check the box to erase the destination, then click on the Restore button.8.


12 of 31 4/3/09 10:22 AM

Using Carbon Copy Cloner to backup to another Macintosh on yournetwork

Carbon Copy Cloner 3 offers the option of securely copying your selected data to another Macintosh on your network (or anywhere on theInternet for that matter). After a brief setup procedure to establish trust between your machine and the target machine, simply indicate the IPaddress or hostname of the machine to which you have access and CCC will take care of the rest. Note: Backing up to a remote Macintosh isnot the same as backing up to a network filesystem. Read this section of the documentation for more information on the latter scenario.

To successfully set up CCC to back up to a remote Macintosh, you will be required to:

Enable Remote Login on the remote Macintosh1.Determine the Unix path to the folder on that machine that you would like to back up to2.Install an "Authentication Credentials" package on your local machine (CCC will place this package on your Desktop)3.Transfer that same "Authentication Credentials" package to your remote Macintosh and install it there4.Verify that the system time on each Macintosh is reasonably in sync with the other5.Confirm that the backup device on the remote Macintosh is ready and mounted (CCC does not currently perform this verification).6.

Configuring CCC to back up to a remote Macintosh is an advanced configuration scenario. If you are unsure of any of these settings, pleaseseek advice at the Bombich Software Forums before proceeding.

Enabling Remote Login on the remote Macintosh

To enable Remote Login on your remote Macintosh, log in to that machine as an admin user and launch System Preferences. Open theSharing Preference Pane and check the box next to "Remote Login". If you are running Mac OS 10.5 Leopard or greater, be sure to allowaccess to "All users". Take note of the message at the bottom of the window, e.g. "To log in to this computer remotely, type "[email protected]" at a shell command prompt." The text after the "@" symbol is the hostname or IP address that you willprovide in CCC's "Remote Macintosh" dialog box.

Determining the "Path to backup directory"

To determine the value to enter in this field, first log in to the remote Macintosh as an admin user and create the destination folder. Click onthe destination folder, then from the Finder's "File" menu, choose "Get Info". In the "General" section of the Get Info panel, the "Where"attribute indicates where that folder is located. The path to your backup directory will consist of that location, plus "/", plus the name of yourdestination directory. For example, I just created a folder named "Mike-Backups" in the Shared directory on my remote Macintosh. The GetInfo panel indicates that it is located at "/Users/Shared", therefore the path to my backup directory is "/Users/Shared/Mike-Backups". Note:while spaces and special characters should not pose a problem in the backup directory path, I strongly recommend that you avoid them.

The "Authentication Credentials" package installer

Before you can back up to a remote Macintosh, you must first set up "public key authentication" (PKA) between the Macintosh that you'rerunning Carbon Copy Cloner on and the Macintosh that you'd like to back up to. With PKA, you don't need to provide a username/passwordto access the remote machine. Instead, CCC uses pre-shared, 128-bit key pairs to identify the source and target machines. When you click onthe button to create an Authentication Credentials installer, CCC will generate this key pair and create a package installer. The"Authentication Credentials Installer" installs the key pair into the root account on your machine and then into the root account on the targetmachine. You must install them in this order.

Note that you are NOT required to enable the root account on either machine. This is avoided by using public key authentication instead ofpassword-based authentication.

Remote machine requirements

At this time, CCC requires the use of the root account (does not have to be enabled) on both the source and target machines. To successfullyback up to a remote machine, you must have administrative privileges on both machines. This may be improved upon in a future release.

CCC also requires that the remote machine be running Mac OS 10.4.8 or later. The ability to back up to non-Mac OS X machines may beimproved upon in a future release.


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CCC does not currently support backing up directly to an AFP, NFS, or SMB network share. You can back up to a disk image on these types ofvolumes, but a volume to volume clone is not permitted (or technically feasible) to network shares. Read this section of the CCCdocumentation for more details on this topic.

Additional pointers for advanced users

Carbon Copy Cloner's public key-based authentication is designed to work with no additional configuration of the services required forbacking up over a network connection. CCC uses rsync over an ssh tunnel (port 22 by default) to perform the backup. If you do makemodifications to the sshd configuration, consider how that may affect your backup. For example, CCC requires use of the root account overssh. If you set the "PermitRootLogin" key in the sshd.conf file to "no", you will not be able to use CCC to or from that machine. It's animportant distinction to note that the root account does not have to be *enabled*, but sshd must permit the use of the root account.

Restoring from a backup on a remote machine

The restore procedure is nearly identical to the backup procedure. Launch CCC, then select "Remote Macintosh..." from the source menu. Inmost cases, the Remote Settings dialog will be populated with the same information you used to back up originally. Select a target volume,then click the Clone button. Carefully consider the "Delete files that don't exist on the source" option; if there are other important files on thevolume you're restoring to, you don't want to accidentally erase them. Also, when restoring from a remote Macintosh, you will not be giventhe choice of what files to restore, it's all or nothing. Note that you cannot select the boot drive as the target, you will need to boot fromanother drive if you need to restore directly to your boot drive.

Managing backups of multiple computers to one "backup server"

Carbon Copy Cloner can be used to back up several Macs to one particular Mac on your network. When you have several machines in yourhome or office that are turned on and awake at predictable times of the day, this can be a good method of reducing the number of harddrives that you use for backup, and can also help you establish offsite backup practices by consolidating your data. I use this strategy myself,so I'll describe my setup further.

I have a G5 that stays on all the time (media server, file server, backup server, and runs my network). I have two hard drives attached to it,"Backup" and "Offsite Backup." The "Backup" hard drive is a staging hard drive -- it has a folder at the root level for each computer that I backup (five total). When I originally set up the backup task on my laptop, for example, I configured the remote Macintosh information as:

IP address: 10.0.1.11Path: /Volumes/Backup/Mike

Ditto for the other four machines, but to their respective folders. Each of these machines is scheduled to back up to the "Backup" volume on anightly or bi-nightly basis, and the backup server is then configured to clone "Backup" to "Offsite backup" once a night (actually very early inthe morning) after all those other tasks have completed. Every other week my wife takes the "Offsite Backup" hard drive to work and bringshome the one from work. This has been working solidly for me for over a year, and I've had a couple occasions where I've actually needed toretrieve data from the backup (so I know it's really working!).

There are advantages and disadvantages to backing up to a folder on a remote volume (e.g. "Backup"). The main advantage is that I don'thave to make a guess at how much space to allocate to partitions for each of the computers I back up. There's one partition, and when spaceis tight I simply erase some of the archive folders or buy a larger hard drive.

I can't, however, boot from that hard drive because all the OSes are in sub folders. This is no big deal for me because I have plenty ofbootable devices laying around. If I didn't, then I would probably partition the "Backup" hard drive and configure each machine to back updirectly to one of the partitions, e.g.:

IP address: 10.0.1.11Path: /Volumes/Backup_Mike <-- root of the "Backup_Mike" partition

That partition will be bootable if you back up your entire hard drive to it (e.g. both the OS and your user data) and if the disk is partitionedwith a partitioning scheme that the machine you're trying to boot supports. The bonus to this method is that you can get back to productivityvery quickly should you have some sort of disk failure.

The Intel vs. PPC partitioning issue certainly does complicate matters -- if you have a mix of Intel and PPC Macs, you're likely going to needseparate bootable volumes for these machines. If I were in this situation, I would probably have two backup hard drives -- one partitioned asAPM for the PPC Macs, and another partitioned as GPT for the Intel Macs -- then each drive sliced into however many volumes you need forbacking up your computers. Alternatively, you could do as I have -- maintain separate boot drives (e.g. with a base installation of Mac OS X)for Intel and PowerPC Macs, then have another hard drive or partition with folders that are kept up to date with each machine you want toback up.

A caveat for backing up to a remote Macintosh that has no user logged in

For "improved detachability", Mac OS X will unmount any non-internal volumes that are attached to the system when you log out. So, forexample, if you log out of your computer while a USB or Firewire hard drives is attached, you can detach those hard drives from the systemwithout having to manually unmount them first. This is a good thing -- it would be annoying if you had to log back in to your system just toeject a drive. The downside of this, though, is that if you have a scheduled backup task that runs when no user is logged in, the targetvolume may be unavailable. For a local backup, CCC will attempt to manually mount the target volume. When the target of your backup taskis a remote Macintosh, though, CCC will not be able to mount that volume prior to backing up.

If you anticipate backing up to a remote Macintosh that may be sitting at the loginwindow, you can change the behavior of Mac OS X to notunmount detachable volumes. To change this behavior, run this command in the Terminal application on the remote machine:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool YES


14 of 31 4/3/09 10:22 AM

Configuring filters in CCC to limit what is backed up Typically when you clone your hard drive to another drive, you want to copy everything. When you perform regular incremental backups,however, space becomes an issue. Filters allow you to specify what items on your hard drive should not be copied to the backup device whenusing the "Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method. A filter is created automatically for you when you uncheck items in the"Items to be copied" table. More advanced filtering options are available as well, including the ability to exclude items based on file type andthe ability to specify your own rsync-compatible rules.

Creating filters

Creating your own filters is a breeze. Simply choose a source volume in the Source Disk popup menu, then start deselecting items that you donot want to copy. As you deselect items, the default filter for that volume is updated with your selections. To view and edit the filters that youhave created, click on the "gear" popup menu next to the Source Disk popup menu. [If this button is disabled, select a source volume fromthe Source Disk popup menu.]

In the Filter Settings window, you see a list of filters on the left and the contents of those filters on the right. Every time you choose a volumefrom the Source Disk popup menu, a filter is created for you with a name in the form of "Source Disk (Default)". As you deselect items to becopied, those items are added to the filter. When you quit CCC, the filters are saved and available the next time you launch CCC. Wheneveryou choose a volume in the Source Disk popup menu in the future, the settings from the default filter for that volume will be applied.

Customizing filters

Typically you will not need to manually configure your filters. If you would like to maintain more than one filter for a particular volume, or ifyou would like to apply more advanced settings such as file type filters, then you do so in the Filter Settings window. To create a new filter,click the "+" button and provide a name for the filter. To remove a filter, select the filter in the Filters table and click on the "-" button. If youdelete a default filter for a volume, that filter will be recreated the next time you select that volume in the Source Disk popup menu.

To delete items from a filter, select the item(s) from the "Items you have excluded..." table on the right and click the "-" button or press thedelete key.

Advanced filter options

If the files you want to exclude are scattered across your filesystem, it may be tedious to manually exclude each of them. To address this,CCC implements file type filters. File type filters allow you to specify a file extension (e.g. "dmg", "doc", "mp3", etc.) of a file type that youwould like to exclude. Suppose you want to exclude disk images from being backed up, for example*, simply add "dmg" to the File types filtertable and any file with that extension will be excluded.

For the truly adventurous, CCC permits the definition of custom rules. These custom rules follow the syntax defined in the rsync man page.Using the rules in the screenshot above as an example:

- Library/Caches- /var/log- /Library/Logs

The "No logs or cache" filter will exclude any item that contains "Library/Caches" *anywhere* in the path (for example, ~/Library/Caches inevery users home directory as well as in /Library/Caches). Items in the /var/log folder at the root of the volume will be excluded as well asitems in /Library/Logs (but not, for example, in /Users/mike/Library/Logs).

You can learn more about custom rules by reading the "EXCLUDE PATTERNS" section of the rsync man page.

Note: Filters specified in the "Advanced options" section of the Filter Settings window will not be reflected in the "Items to be copied" table inthe main window.


15 of 31 4/3/09 10:22 AM

*How should I back up my File Vault home directory and other mounted disk images?Mounted disk images pose an interesting problem to incremental backup utilities. By simply being mounted and accessed via simplebrowsing, the content of a disk image, and thus the disk image file itself, is modified. If you have a file vault home directory or otherread/write disk images that you keep mounted for secure storage, you will find that these files get backed up every time CCC performs anincremental backup. In a short amount of time, your backup device will become filled almost entirely with moderately modified diskimages.

The best way to deal with backing up mounted disk images is to not back up the file itself. Instead, create a separate task to back up thecontents of the mounted disk image.

Suggested additions to your custom filters

As indicated above, read/write disk image files should excluded from an incremental backup regimen unless they are infrequently used. Byexamining many months of backups, I have discovered that the following "disposable"items also consume too much space on my backuphard drive:

~/Library/Caches/Library/Logs/var/log

Items automatically ignored

When copying files using the "Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method, CCC automatically ignores certain files and folders fromthe backup procedure. The contents of this list were determined based on Apple recommendations and years of experience. The following isa list of the items that are excluded. This list is not configurable (though the curious would eventually learn that these are defined in CarbonCopy Cloner.app/Contents/Resources/defaults.plist).

.Spotlight-V100/.fseventsd/.hotfiles.btree/.vol/*/Auth.bak/Backups.backupdb/Cleanup At Startup/TheVolumeSettingsFolderTrash.Trash.Trashes/TheFindByContentFolder/Shutdown CheckTemporary Items/VM Storage/OpenFolderListDF/Desktop (Mac OS 9)/.com.apple.NetBootX/Volumes/*.VolumeIcon.icns/dev/*/automount/Network/private/var/vm/*/private/tmp/*


16 of 31 4/3/09 10:22 AM

Scheduling backup tasks in Carbon Copy Cloner Carbon Copy Cloner offers hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling. If your workstyle is too hectic for scheduling, you can also schedulea task to run whenever your backup hard drive is attached to your computer. To schedule a backup task, first configure CCC as if you weregoing to run a backup task immediately. Instead of clicking on the Clone button, click on the "Save Task" button. In the Scheduler windowthat appears, provide a name for the scheduled task (double-click "Untitled") and indicate when you want the task to run.

Scheduling a task

To schedule a task, choose the desired repetition interval from the popup menu next to "Run this task:". If you would rather have the backuptask run only when the target volume is reattached to your computer, choose "When target is reconnected".

Next choose how many (hours, days, weeks, or months) you would like to skip between backup events ("Repeat every:"). Finally, indicate thetime of day at which you would like the event to start. When scheduling a task to run on a weekly basis, you may also indicate what days ofthe week on which your task should run. At the bottom of the scheduler window, CCC will indicate how frequently the task will run and whenit is next scheduled to run.

Additional Settings

By default, CCC uses the name and Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) of your source and target to identify those volumes. By verifying bothof these identifiers, there is less risk in, for example, backing up to a volume that has the same name as your usual target but is not actuallythe target. While beneficial, this behavior can sometimes have the wrong result. For example, if you rotate between a pair of firewire harddrives, even though they have the same name (e.g. "Offsite Backup"), CCC will not, by default, backup to both of them, it will claim that theUUID of one of the drives does not match that of the originally chosen target.

The deal with this scenario, CCC allows you to disable verification of the target drive's UUID. When deselecting this option, be vigilant thatyou do not rename your target hard drive and that you never attach a hard drive to your machine that is named the same as your target harddrive.

In addition to disabling the UUID verification, CCC will also allow you to disable verification of the target volume's name. Obviously, both of


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these options may not be disabled at the same time (CCC won't let you do that), but in cases where you may want to rename your target harddrive, this option will allow you to do so without breaking your scheduled backup task.

If your target hard drive is an iPod, CCC will provide an additional option in the Settings tab: "Wait for iPod:iTunes sync to complete beforecopying data". When you bought your iPod, you probably did so with the intention of using it to enjoy your music collection. To this end,Carbon Copy Cloner recognizes that the primary purpose of an iPod is for music, and respects the synchronization period that occurs whenyou connect your iPod to your Mac. This option is enabled by default.

Waiting for iPod:iTunes synchronizationIn some instances, it may appear that iPod:iTunes synchronization has started, yet CCC begins the backup task anyway. CCC determineswhether the synchronization is occurring based on whether the synchronization background tool is running, not what is described in theiTunes interface. Before iTunes actually starts the synchronization, it determines when it last synced your iPod and then prepares data tobe copied to your iPod (calendars, music, contacts, etc.). Depending on how much data it has to prepare to send to your iPod and howfast your computer is, iTunes may take more than a minute preparing to copy data to your iPod. If iPod:iTunes synchronization hasn'tstarted in one minute, CCC proceeds with the backup task anyway. This time interval is not configurable, but seemed like an adequatemiddle ground between waiting too long for a sync task that may have been cancelled anyway and not waiting long enough for an iPodlong overdue for a sync. If CCC starts a backup task before iPod:iTunes synchronization has completed, you may, if desired, click CCC'sStop button and defer the task to a later time.

The Description tab indicates the name that you have provided for your backup task as well as a description of the task. CCC populates thisdescription with the one provided in the main interface, but you may modify this description to suit your needs.

Managing and monitoring scheduled tasks

Scheduled task settings may be modified at any time. You can also temporarily disable a scheduled task by unchecking the box next to itsname in the "Scheduled Tasks" list. To delete a task altogether, simply select the task in the "Scheduled Tasks" list and click the "-" button orpress the delete key. If the task is running when you save modified settings or delete the task, the scheduled task itself will prompt forverification that you intend to end the running task. Choosing to not end the running task will not prevent the settings from being saved, butit will prevent the settings from taking effect. The new settings will take effect the next time you restart your computer or when you modifyanother setting and re-save them.

If you would like to run a scheduled task immediately, select the task in the "Scheduled Tasks" list and click on the Run button.

In addition to feedback provided in the interface, CCC records some information about your scheduled task in a log file. While the contents ofthis log file are generally intended for communication of problems to the developer, end users may find some of the information in this loghelpful. CCC's log file is located at /Library/Logs/CCC.log. You can view the contents of this log by selecting "CCC Log" from CCC's Windowmenu.

Deferring and skipping scheduled tasks

Occasionally, a scheduled task will run at the most inconvenient time. Perhaps you are under deadline and don't have the patience for thehard drive performance hit of a system-wide backup. Or perhaps you are just about to pack up and hit the road. If you ever find the need tocancel a scheduled task at a particular time, CCC gives you two options for maintaining your backup regimen: 1) skip this particularscheduled run time or 2) defer this scheduled task to a specific time in the future.

When you skip a task, CCC will run the backup at the next scheduled interval. Deferring gives you more flexibility. Suppose that all you needare another twenty minutes to finish a project. Click defer and wind the clock forward twenty minutes -- CCC will run the task again then. Orsuppose you realize that you forgot to bring your backup drive to work with you today and you have a scheduled task that runs every otherhour. Rather than getting reminded of this four times, simply defer the backup to tomorrow.

Additionally, CCC offers you the option of permanently rescheduling a backup task. If, after a week or so, you realize that the originallyscheduled time is really just too inconvenient, you can modify the start time in the defer panel by checking the box to "Reschedule all futureevents for this time of day". For more significant modifications to your backup scheduled, launch CCC and choose "Scheduled Tasks" from theCarbon Copy Cloner menu to edit your task.

What if ...?

What happens if no one is logged in when the scheduled task runs?The scheduled task will run whether someone is logged in to the machine or not. If no one is logged in to the machine, CCC will run in thebackground without a user interface. CCC logs information to /Library/Logs/CCC.log, you can use that log file to monitor CCC progress (e.g.logged in remotely via SSH).

How is system sleep handled?If a backup task is scheduled to run while your computer is sleeping, CCC will run that task immediately upon wake (CCC waits 10 seconds toallow your machine to establish network connectivity and spin up hard drives).

What if the backup drive is not available when the scheduled task runs?If your backup hard drive is unavailable when the task is scheduled to occur (perhaps you're listening to tunes on your iPod at the time), CCCwill report an error that the drive is not available and ask you to skip or defer the task. If you choose to skip the task, CCC will immediatelyrun the backup when you reattach your hard drive. If you do not attach the hard drive to your computer before the next scheduled run time,CCC will prompt you again that the hard drive is missing.

How do scheduled tasks "work"


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Carbon Copy Cloner Scheduled tasks are managed by launchd. Each scheduled task exists in the form of a property list file stored in /Library/LaunchDaemons. When these LaunchDaemons are loaded, an instance of "ccc_helper.app" is launched and configured with the scheduledtask settings.


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Getting more information about what is happening during the clone Previous versions of Carbon Copy Cloner included a log that indicated the specific Unix commands that were running "Under the hood". CCCversion 3 was completely rewritten and uses new techniques to back up your data. While some of those techniques still leverage the Unixunderpinnings of Mac OS X, much of CCC now uses lower level features of the operating system that are not appropriate for logging (forexample, you would not be able to "run the commands" in the Terminal application).

Learn more about (manually) creating a bootable backup of Mac OS X

Carbon Copy Cloner version 3 does, however, produce a log of output (/Library/Logs/CCC.log) that is useful primarily to the developer. Youcan use this log to verify the productivity of your scheduled tasks. To view CCC's log file, choose "CCC Log" from the Window menu. Betaversions of CCC will produce more output than non-beta versions. Additionally, you can manually enable debug logging by running thiscommand in the Terminal:

defaults write com.bombich.ccc debug -bool YES

Debugging output is only useful to the developer, so don't enable debug logging unless instructed to do so for support purposes. CCCimposes a size limit of 1MB on the log file. When this limit is reached, the log is rolled over.

Comment on the "Data copied" figure reported in the CCC.logThis value indicates the data written that was actually consumed as disk space. For example, suppose you copy a single file that occupies asingle 4Kb block (4,096 bytes) on the disk, but that file fills only 32 bytes of that block. This value represents the accumulation of those 32byte values. This value will *not* correspond to the value of disk usage indicated in Disk Utility (not even close in most cases), Disk Utilityreports the number of blocks occupied multiplied by the size of the block.


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Configuring Advanced Settings in Carbon Copy Cloner Carbon Copy Cloner includes a few features that require a little consideration and research before using. These features are accessed bychoosing "Advanced Settings..." from the Carbon Copy Cloner menu.

Clone to a subfolder on the target volume

There are two typical scenarios in which you may want to clone the contents of your source volume to a subfolder of the target volume ratherthan the root level of the target volume: 1) You maintain items at the root level of your target volume that you do not want to be erased, yetyou want to do incremental backups, deleting items on the backup that were deleted from the source. 2) You want to use the target volumeto back up more than one computer.

In the first scenario, your goal is to make regular, incremental backups to a target volume, deleting from the backup the files that you havedeleted from the source. Except you don't want to delete items that were on the target volume before you started backing up! In general,these are conflicting goals. However, previous versions of CCC handled this situation quite gracefully. CCC version 3 uses a differentapproach to backing up than previous versions, and it is no longer capable of simply excluding preexisting items on the target volume. Thereare two solutions to this dilemma. The first is to use the "Clone to a subfolder..." setting. By specifying a subfolder (simply indicate the nameof a folder, CCC will create it if it does not exist), CCC will copy the contents of your source volume into a single folder on the target volume.Any other files or folders on the target volume will be left unaffected. If you choose to use the "Delete items that don't exist on source", thisrule will only apply to items within the subfolder that you have indicated.

While this seems like the perfect solution to the problem, note that you will not be able to boot from the backup volume, nor will you be ableto select the subfolder as a source volume. You can still access your backup files via the Finder. An alternative to this method is to placeitems from the target volume that you don't want to lose into a directory prefixed with "_CCC", then specify the "Archive modified and deleteditems" option. When using this option, CCC automatically ignores any directory prefixed with "_CCC", as that is the prefix used on thedirectories used to store archives of modified and deleted items. Another alternative is to clone to a disk image on the target. This option isexplained below.

In the second scenario, your goal is to backup multiple computers. Despite that it is tempting, you are discouraged from using the "Clone tosubfolder" feature to solve this problem. Instead, you should clone to separate disk images.

Run a shell script (before or after) the clone operation

If there is functionality that you need that does not exist within CCC, pre and post clone shell scripts may be the solution for you. Forexample, suppose you want to back up your Open Directory Master with CCC at regular intervals, but you know that a simply file-level copywill not properly back up an open database. The following pre-clone shell script will archive your OD master to a disk image for laterrestoration via Server Admin. It also dumps copies of Server Admin configurations as well as your MySQL databases:

#!/bin/sh

# Path to recovery directory (permissions should be 700 -- read-only root or admin)recover="/etc/recover"

# mysqldump the databasesecho "Dumping MySQL databases"mysqldump --user=root --password='s3kr!t' -A > $recover/mysql.dump

# grab the server configuration plists (only specify services that are enabled,# use "serveradmin list" for a list of services)echo "Generating serveradmin configuration plists"services="afp dhcp dns ipfilter nat network swupdate vpn web"for service in $services; do serveradmin -x settings $service > $recover/serverconfig/$service.plist sleep 1done

# Backup Open Directory (if it's Thursday)day=`date ''+%u''`if [ $day != 4 ]; then exit 0; fi

od_backup=$recover/od_backupts=`date ''+%F''`echo "dirserv:backupArchiveParams:archivePassword = s3kr!t" > $od_backupecho "dirserv:backupArchiveParams:archivePath = $recover/od_$ts" >> $od_backupecho "dirserv:command = backupArchive" >> $od_backup

serveradmin command < $od_backup

Pre-clone shell scripts run after you authenticate, and before any other tasks (e.g. mounting a target disk image, erasing the target).Post-clone shell scripts run after all other tasks have completed successfully. CCC passes as parameters both the source and target paths.For example, the following shell script:

#!/bin/sh

echo "Running $0"echo `date`


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echo "Source: $1"echo "Target: $2"

Would produce the following output (typically in /Library/Logs/CCC.log, though you can redirect as desired):

Running /etc/postaction.shWed Aug 14 21:55:28 CDT 2007Source: /Volumes/HomeTarget: /Volumes/Offsite Backup

Output from your pre- and post-clone shell scripts will be logged in /Library/Logs/CCC.log. CCC may drop the last output from your script,however, because output handling is handled asynchronously to avoid impacting performance of the backup task. To force all output to belogged, you can add "sleep 1" at the last line of your script.

Also, if your pre-clone script exits with a non-zero exit status, it will cause CCC to abort the backup operation. This can be used to youradvantage if you want to apply preconditions to your backup operation. Alternatively, you can add "exit 0" at the end of your script to preventany errors in your pre-clone script from aborting the backup task.


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Updating Carbon Copy Cloner Carbon Copy Cloner version 3 includes a new software update feature. To check for application updates, launch Carbon Copy Cloner andchoose "Update CCC..." from the Carbon Copy Cloner menu. By default, CCC will automatically check for updates once a day. To change thispreference, choose "week," "month," or "Never" from the popup menu indicating how frequently to check for updates. If you would like tocheck for updates manually, click the button labeled "Check for updates now". If a new version of CCC is available, a window will appearindicating new features, problems resolved, etc. If your version is current, you will receive a message indicating that you are up to date.

You also can choose to be informed of beta updates. Occasionally, beta updates are provided to field test updated version of CCC to confirmthat code changes resolved a particular problem. In general, beta updates are only issued when a user has discovered a problem that thesoftware developer cannot reproduce. Therefore, you should only apply beta updates when instructed to do so by Bombich Software.

Installing an update when you have scheduled tasks

When a software update is available and you choose to download and install it, you will be prompted to temporarily unload any scheduledtasks. Because scheduled tasks run as the system administrator user, you will be prompted to authenticate to unload these scheduled tasks.When the download and installation is complete, CCC will be relaunched and will prompt you to authenticate once again to reload yourscheduled tasks.

Manually installing updated versions of Carbon Copy Cloner

If you decide to manually install a newer version of CCC, be sure to disable any scheduled tasks first. The Finder will not allow you to replacethe original version of CCC unless scheduled tasks have been disabled.


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Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to the "Repair permissions" option?

"Repair permissions" is not what I consider to be a task associated with backing up one's hard drive. It is at most a maintenance task, andmore suitably a troubleshooting tool that should be used judiciously.

I just backed up my Boot Drive to a partition on an external Firewire Hard Disk. However, the volume capacities donot match. Should they? Should I be concerned there's more than a GB missing?

There are a couple legitimate explanations for a mismatch between the capacities reported in Disk Utility. First, when cloning using the"Incremental backup of selected items" cloning method, there is a list of items that are excluded from the backup either because they areephemeral items regenerated every time your machine reboots, or they are not appropriate to back up or because they actually reduce theportability of your OS to another computer. Here is an exhaustive list of those items:

.Spotlight-V100/.fseventsd/.hotfiles.btree/.vol/*/Auth.bak/Backups.backupdb/Cleanup At Startup/TheVolumeSettingsFolder.Trash.Trashes/TheFindByContentFolder/Shutdown CheckTemporary Items/VM Storage/OpenFolderListDF/Desktop (Mac OS 9)/.com.apple.NetBootX/Volumes/*.VolumeIcon.icns/dev/*/automount/Network/private/var/vm/*/private/tmp/*

While I don't recommend it, you could modify the list of items that CCC ignores by editing the "defaults.plist" file within the CCC applicationbundle. Note that these items are not ignored when using the "Backup everything" cloning method.

While the exclusion of these items explains much of the disk capacity discrepancy you may discover in Disk Utility, it does not explain it all. Auser suggested the following scenario after performing a "Backup everything" clone to his target drive:

Boot drive - 39.67 GB usedBackup drive - 38.55 GB used

Should I be concerned there's more than a GB missing? Could this be a swap file or something? Is there an easy way to isolatewhat files are not on both?

A GB seems like a lot, but it's not surprising, not for 40GB used (the discrepancy increases with the amount of data on your boot volume).

I spent about 3 months head-down in the HFS+ filesystem specification trying to figure out why the contents of a cloned volume is alwaysless than the boot volume (and it really is only that large of a difference when the source is the boot volume). I still can't explain it entirely,however I noticed that if I booted from the cloned volume, the difference was suddenly in the reverse.

The issue is that Disk Utility (and Finder Get Info for the volume) is misleading. The value that Disk Utility reports is indeed the amount ofspace consumed on your hard drive, however, it is not the amount of space consumed on the drive by all the files and folders that you cansee. And I'm not referring to the other files as simply "invisible", these other files and directories that make up the rest of the space you're"missing" are simply not presented to the operating system. These items are filesystem implementation details, and it isn't possible to copythem directly with file-level copying tools.

Does this mean you're losing data? Absolutely not. It's pretty easy to prove it to yourself too, just boot from your cloned volume and take alook at the capacity reports in Disk Utility. Here's an example I performed on my test machine:

** Booted from the original source volumeSource: 5,258,776,576 bytesClone: 5,025,562,624 bytes

**Booted from the clone volumeSource: 4,996,599,808 bytesClone: 5,250,097,152 bytes

Weird, eh? Having stared at this issue for three months, having developed a utility that would carefully analyze every single file that I couldfind and copy, I am 100% confident that I'm not losing a scrap of information with my file-level copy engine for the "Backup everything"cloning method. What I have learned and I am confident in saying is that Disk Utility can't really be used as a good measure of success foryour clone. That's not to say that what it reports is wrong, it is simply misleading.

Can I use CCC to back up my BootCamp (Windows) partition?


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Backing up non-HFS+-formatted volumes is not currently supported. I am investigating how to provide this support in a future release.

CCC requires an HFS+-formatted target volume. Why? And how do I format my new hard drive as HFS+?

Mac OS X is installed on an HFS+ filesystem. The HFS+ filesystem defines many types of metadata that describe non-data attributes of yourfiles. Creation date, access control lists, permissions and ownership, Finder flags, and extended attributes are among the various metadatatypes defined in the HFS+ standard. To adequately back up all of your files and their associated metadata, CCC requires that your backupvolume is also formatted as HFS+.

When you purchase a new hard drive, or if you have a hard drive that you use with a Windows computer, that hard drive is oftenpre-formatted as FAT32. CCC won't let you back up directly to the FAT32 volume (it will disable, or "gray out" the selection in the source andtarget menus) because it will lose some metadata. Most notably, you'll lose ownership and permissions as well as an Access Control Listsettings.

Additionally, Macintoshes can only boot from hard drives partitioned with either the Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme (PowerPC- orIntel-based Macs) or the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme (Intel-based Macs). The hard drive icons that you see in the Finder are volumes.The partition scheme of a hard drive describes how volumes are physically defined on the hard disk. Every hard drive has exactly onepartition scheme and at least one volume. When you "partition" a hard drive, you simply create multiple volumes on that hard drive.

Follow these steps to format your hard drive as an HFS+ volume:

Launch Disk Utility1.Click on the hard drive device in the list on the left (the volumes have names that you see in the Finder, like "Macintosh HD" whereasthe hard drive device has a name that includes the size of the hard drive and a vendor name or serial number, like "111.8 GBST9129876A")

2.

Click on the Partition tab3.Choose "1 Partition" from the "Volume Scheme" popup menu (or more if desired).4.Click on the "Options" button at the bottom of the partitions table and choose a partition scheme appropriate for the way you intend touse the hard drive:

5.

Click on the "Apply" button6.Choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" format, then click on the Erase button at the bottom of the window7.

What are "Input/output" errors, and how can I resolve them?

When copying to or from damaged media, or a disk with a damaged filesystem, CCC may report "Input/output" errors. If no other majorerrors are encountered, CCC will produce a dialog box indicating:

"CCC detected "Input/output" errors during the clone. These errors are indicative of filesystem damage or hardware trouble with thesource or target volume. Examine the CCC.log to determine the nature of these errors and consider replacing the affected hard drive iffilesystem repair is unsuccessful."

Correspondingly, the CCC.log file will list the files that CCC was attempting to read or write when the error occurred:

02:13:49 rsync: read errors mapping "/Applications/Keynote.app/Contents/Resources/Themes/Shared/flowers_h.jpg":Input/output error (5)02:14:39 rsync: read errors mapping "/Applications/Keynote.app/Contents/Resources/Themes/Shared/flowers_h.jpg":Input/output error (5)02:18:20 rsync: read errors mapping "Users/bombich/Movies/1984.mov": Input/output error (5)02:18:24 rsync: read errors mapping "Users/bombich/Movies/1984.mov": Input/output error (5)02:18:24 ERROR: Users/bombich/Movies/1984.mov failed verification -- update discarded.

The exact errors may vary, and some may be duplicated. If the affected file path begins with a "/" and CCC reports a read error, it is probablyyour source volume (e.g. the boot volume) that is affected. Errors affecting the target volume often indicate that "mkdir" failed or other writeerrors occurred, or the path will indicate the name of target volume.


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Occasionally these errors are reported because your filesystem is damaged, but these errors typically indicate that your hard drive is dying.You have a narrow window of opportunity to back up the data from that disk to another hard drive. Time is precious; components could failat any moment rendering the drive completely unmountable. Read activity is stressful on a dying volume, especially a full-volume backup.When I run into these errors on a hard drive that has not been backed up, I immediately back up the files that are most important. Once themost important data is backed up, I then try to do a full-volume backup. Once all important data is backed up, I then may try a filesystemrepair utility (e.g. Disk Utility or Disk Warrior) if signs of imminent faliure are not present (e.g. particulary noisy drive, or loud, repetitiveclicks).

What if the dying drive's volume won't mount?More often than not, you're completely out of luck. I provided tech support at a University many years ago and had the opportunity to witnessmany failed drives. Occasionally we were able to revive a hard drive for small amounts of time by letting the drive cool down (somewhere cooland dry, not cold) and then powering it up attached to a service workstation (e.g. don't attempt to boot from it, you may not have enoughtime). When a drive doesn't mount, it typically goes to the recycle center or to DriveSavers if the data is worth the recovery cost. If you'rereading this paragraph now because you're in this situation, my heart goes out to you.

How do you check the accuracy of the backup?

From a statistical perspective, booting from the cloned volume is an excellent way of sampling the efficacy of the clone. If the OS consumes10% of the data on the volume for example, and booting requires that the clone be accurate (and it does), then you have a really goodsample. If the cloned volume boots, you can reasonably conclude that the clone was executed accurately.

While you're booted from the cloned volume, launching applications, checking your email, firing up iPhoto, etc. will increase your "sample"size and give you more confidence that the clone was executed accurately.

Can I do other things when the backup is being done?

Yes and no, it really depends. Performance will be affected during the clone (especially the first one) as CCC reads the entire source volumeand writes to the target volume. If your work is "disk bound" -- that is your applications are reading or writing to either the source or target,then you'll notice a performance hit. If you're just reading email or writing a Pages document, then you probably won't notice the performancehit.

Affecting the accuracy of the backup task is something else that should be considered. Typically it's OK to work from the source volume whileyou're copying it, with the understanding that if CCC copied a file, then you open it, make changes, save it, then CCC completes the backuptask, the modified version of your document is not backed up (this time around). Typically that's no big deal, the modifications will getbacked up the next time the backup task runs. More importantly, though, if you're working with large files (mounted disk image, Entourageemail database, VMWare/Parallels container) during the backup operation, it is possible that those large files could be modified while CCC isbacking up that file. This won't affect the source file, but there's a good chance that the backup version of that file will be corrupt. For thisreason it is a good idea to stop using applications that may be modifying large files.

What makes a volume bootable?

Bootability comes down to a few simple rules:

The hard drive enclosure must support booting a Macintosh (applies to external hard drives only)1.The computer must support booting from the hard drive's partition format (e.g. APM vs GPT vs MBR)2.The cloned filesystem must have all the required components of Mac OS X3.The cloned operating system must be properly "blessed"4.

When you buy a hard drive enclosure that you intend to use to boot your Mac, caveat emptor -- not all enclosures will boot a Mac (or anymachine for that matter). Be sure to check that the manufacturer or vendor supports booting a Mac with the enclosure. You may even have topay attention to whether they support booting your particular architecture (e.g. PowerPC vs. Intel). Some Western Digital enclosures had thisproblem. If you can't find solid proof that an enclosure will boot your Mac, don't buy it.

Once you have your new hard drive (in an enclosure or installed into your computer), you need to a) apply a partitioning scheme to the diskand b) format one or more volumes on the disk. Even if you do not plan to "partition" the disk, that is, slice the disk into smaller volumes, youstill need to apply the correct partitioning scheme to the disk. Every disk has a partitioning scheme, even if it only has a single volume. I gointo plenty of detail on this in this section of the documentation, so I won't rehash it here. Suffice it to say that PowerPC Macs and Intel Macsboot from different partition schemes, and each from a different partition scheme than what the overwhelming majority of hard drives shipwith.

Rules #1 and #2 are external to the functionality of CCC. CCC will not apply a partition scheme to your disk, nor will it affect or modify yourpartition scheme in any way*. Also, if a hard drive enclosure won't boot Mac OS X, there's no software solution that will resolve that problem.Once you're sure you have those rules in hand, we can look at rule #3.

* OK, there's a small caveat to this for complete transparency. When doing a block-level clone, CCC will reformat the target volume. As aresult, it must update the partition table entry for the target volume. Functionally, however, CCC is having no substantive effect on thepartitioning of your disk.

Rule #3 is pretty intuitive -- if you want the operating system to boot, it must be whole. If you've cleared rule #2, CCC will tell you whetheryour target will have all the necessary components to boot Mac OS X. I should be clear that this is not exhaustive -- CCC will verify that thefollowing items are present on the source and will be copied in their entirety to the target volume:

/Library/System/bin/etc/mach_kernel/private/sbin/tmp/usr/var


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So, if you choose to exclude /Applications or /Users for example, the cloned volume would still very likely boot. How much functionalityyou'd have is another story. Likewise, if the source volume's OS is not whole and, as a result, not bootable, CCC doesn't do an extensiveanalysis of the OS to confirm that it will boot. The bottom line, though, is that CCC will give a pretty good indication about whether yourtarget volume will have the right OS components to actually boot.

Rule #4 is perhaps the least understood, so I'll do my best to explain it here. When a Macintosh boots, this happens:

The computer performs a Power On Self Test. When that test succeeds, you hear the characteristic Macintosh startup chime.1.The computer's pre-boot firmware (software that is embedded in a chip on the computer's motherboard) takes account of thehardware that is present, builds a device tree, and determines which hardware device to boot from (more on this in a bit). For the sakeof simplicity, let's suppose a machine is configured to boot from particular volume on a particular hard drive.

2.

The firmware of the computer accesses the filesystem of that volume and determines the location of the file, or folder containing thefile, that is "blessed" to initiate the operating system.

3.

That file is executed by the firmware and control of the hardware is handed over from firmware to the booter.4.The booter executes the kernel of the operating system and pre-loads a kernel extensions cache.5.The kernel initiates the rest of the boot process (primarily by executing launchd)6.

The gist of all of this is that every bootable volume must indicate the location of the system folder. The path of the folder turns out to beirrelevant, because the HFS+ filesystem simply stores the "inode" of this particular folder. The inode is basically like a street address for thefile, it indicates where on the disc platter the folder is located. This information is stored in the HFS+ Volume Header, but you can easily seethe current state of this information using the "bless" command in the Terminal application. For example:

bash-3.2# bless --info /finderinfo[0]: 116 => Blessed System Folder is /System/Library/CoreServicesfinderinfo[1]: 546345 => Blessed System File is /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efifinderinfo[2]: 0 => Open-folder linked list emptyfinderinfo[3]: 0 => No OS 9 + X blessed 9 folderfinderinfo[4]: 0 => Unused field unsetfinderinfo[5]: 116 => OS X blessed folder is /System/Library/CoreServices

The relevant information in this case is that the blessed system folder is at inode 116, and that path (for the human reader) is /System/Library/CoreServices. PowerPC-based Macs need only this piece of information to boot. PPC Open Firmware will find that directory, thenexecute the file named "BootX" within that directory. Intel-based Macs also use the "Blessed System File" information. In this case, that is thefile at inode 546345 and (again, for the human reader), that file is located at /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi.

It is important to note that blessing a volume is different than specifying a boot device. Blessing a volume simply updates the information inthe HFS Volume Header that indicates where the blessed system folder and file are located. When you specify a particular volume as thestartup disk, on the other hand, the computer stores a reference to that volume in the "Non volatile RAM" -- basically a small section of RAMwhose contents are not lost when the machine loses power or is shutdown. The importance of this disctinction, and all four of these rules forthat matter, is that simply setting a volume as the startup disk may not be sufficient to actually boot from that volume.

Can I backup directly to an AFP or SMB network file share? How about to a Time Capsule?

CCC can back up directly to an HFS+ formatted local volume, or to a disk image on any writable network volume. CCC cannot, however,backup directly to a network filesystem (e.g. AFP, SMB, Airport Extreme "Airdisk", or Time Capsule). There are significant technical limitationsto backing up an HFS+ filesystem to a non-HFS+ filesystem (most notably preservation of ownership and permission information), therefore Irecommend and support backing up only to a disk image on non-HFS+ filesystems.

CCC indicates that it is located on a volume that doesn't support the setuid bit. What does that mean, and how canI resolve this?

To be able to back up your entire filesystem, including the parts of the OS that are privy only to the "root" user, CCC must perform itsoperations with elevated privileges. To do this without compromising the security of your computer, CCC follows the Apple guidelines forcalling a helper tool with special permissions. To function properly and obtain the appropriate level of privileges, CCC must be located on avolume that supports the special permissions of the helper tool. While your boot volume should almost always support these permissions,some other volumes may not. Disk images, File Vault home directories, network filesystems, and volumes residing on certain external harddrive enclosures do not support the special permissions that CCC requires. To determine which volumes on your computer will support aninstallation of CCC, run this command in the Terminal application:

mount

The output of that command will indicate all volumes currently mounted on your system and the mount options for each of those volumes. Ifa volume has the "nosuid" mount option specified, CCC will not work on that volume.


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Carbon Copy Cloner Public Source Code Credits

Localizations

I would like to thank the following people for their generous help in translating CCC into other languages:

German: Martin KowalewskiJapanese: Tadahisa SUGISAKIItalian: Francesco MagarielloSpanish: Victor BottaccoDutch: Alexander HenketFrench: Antoine LATOUR

Opensource Credits

Carbon Copy Cloner contains portions of source code available under the Apple Public Source License. That code may be downloaded byclicking the links below.

vsdbutil_main.c (View my modifications: vsdbutil.h and vsdbutil.c)

View the APSL 2.0 license

Carbon Copy Cloner also includes, independently in binary form, rsync version 3.0.5. rsync is made available under the GNU General PublicLicense. Per the license requirements, the source code and my modifications may be downloaded via the links provided below. This modifiedsoftware is provided at no cost and with no warranty, also per the GNU GPL.

Download the complete rsync 3.0.5 projectDownload the rsync 3.0.5 patchesDownload the diff file (diff between 3.0.5 + [crtimes.diff, fileflags.diff, and backup-dir-dels.diff] and my modifications)View the GNU GPL

Carbon Copy Cloner is not a derivative work of rsync, nor does it depend on rsync for ordinary operation. Rsync is included as a convenienceand an option, and called in binary form as required.


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CCC Release History Originally published on January 18, 2002, Carbon Copy Cloner was the very first native cloning utility for Mac OS X. For version 3, CarbonCopy Cloner was completely rebuilt with a new suite of features to meet the growing needs of Mac OS X users. In addition to the fastdisk-to-disk cloning, CCC is now a full-featured backup utility as well.

Among the new features in CCC 3 are:

Support for block-level disk-to-disk clones.Synchronization built-in, not bolted on.Support for backing up across the network to another Macintosh.Advanced scheduling capabilities -- choose what days to run your backups and how frequently they should run. You can also defer abackup if it starts at an inopportune time.Now you can create a scheduled task that backs up your data whenever you attach a specific hard drive or iPod.The ability to drill down into folders to select exactly what gets copied and what doesn't (you can drill down indefinitely).A more responsive interface and the ability to stop the clone.More accurate feedback during the clone.The ability to pick up where a previously aborted backup task left off.More information about your volumes are available within the CCC interface.

v. 3.2.1 (24), March 30, 2009

Resolved interface issues with non-English localizations.Resolved an issue in which, in some circumstances, rsync was unable to create a directory if the parent directory was locked.Addressed a codesigning issue that would prevent CCC from launching in some cases on Mac OS X Tiger.Resolved an issue in which the Authentication Credentials installer package would not install on certain installations of Mac OS X Tiger.

v. 3.2 (22), March 18, 2009

Prior to version 3, CCC would not delete items at the root level of the target volume if those items were not present on the sourcevolume. This was a convenient feature, but due to some fairly significant underlying changes in CCC 3, that feature was not broughtforward. This feature is now available again in version 3.2 and later via the "Protect root-level items on the target" option. See thedocumentation for more details on the implementation of this feature.Implemented filters support for remote source volumes.CCC no longer disables non-HFS formatted volumes in the source and target lists. Rather, selecting these non-supported filesystemsas a source or target will produce a helpful dialog box indicating how to proceed with those volumes.The description of what will happen during a "Backup everything" task has been updated to more accurately reflect what actuallyoccurs.CCC now correctly reports on the bootability of mirrored volumes on PowerPC systems.Resolved a few minor issues with cropped text in non-English localizations.CCC will now report IO errors via a dialog box every time they are encountered. Previously, non-IO related errors encountered after IOerrors would take precedence, and IO errors would only be reported in the CCC log.Addressed an issue in which CCC would fail with a generic error when running out of space for temporary files on the target volume.Included an updated version of rsync 3.0.5.Resolved an issue in which locked folders caused synchronization errors in rare circumstances.Resolved several rsync-related issues related to getting, listing, setting, and removing extended attributes.Resolved an issue in which CCC would prompt the user to run a scheduled task (with a remote Macintosh as the target) when thenetwork connection was re-established even if the task had been explicitly deferred.CCC now creates its own key pair for ssh communication with other Macs on your network, rather than using any pre-existing keypairs.CCC now mounts disk images at custom mount points in /tmp rather than in the default location of /Volumes.Resolved an issue in which disk images could not be created on AFP or SMB network shares.Resolved an issue in which the failure of certain built-in tasks would indicate that there was an error with a preflight script.Several updates to the documentation: Expanded on the Tips section, added extensive coverage of the new "Protect root-level items onthe target" feature, updated instructions on restoring from a disk image, minor updates to the "Backing up to a remote Macintosh"section (plus a large addition on backing up multiple Macs to a single "server"), and added several items to the FAQ section.

v. 3.1.3 (21), December 8, 2008

Fixed an issue in which the target volume would not be bootable in some cases.Fixed an issue in which a block-level clone would be attempted inappropriately.Included updated localizations including a complete French localization.CCC should no longer check for updates if a backup task is running.CCC now ignores Time Machine backup databases. Time Machine backups will not be backed up (CCC does not support backing upTime Machine backups).Messages indicating that a scheduled task's target disk has reappeared are now automatically dismissed after 60 seconds allowing thetask to run.Fixed an issue that would prevent the saving of scheduled tasks upon the very first launch of CCC.CCC no longers permits non-HFS+ volumes as a selectable source volume (in support of the defined system requirements).Fixed an issue in which files or folders with special characters (e.g. "[", "]", and "*") could not be excluded in an "Incremental backup ofselected items" backup task.Fixed an issue in which CCC would report a generic error rather then indicating that a backup task failed because there was notenough free space on the target to accommodate large files that had been modified since a previous backup.

v. 3.1.2 (20), October 13, 2008

Resolved an issue with the syncronization engine that caused Incremental backups to fail in some cases.The "Backup everything" cloning method now properly handles inherited ACLs.The "Backup everything" cloning method is now 25% faster during a file-level copy. It consumes far lass time when backing up to an


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existing backup.Fixed a bug in which creation dates of modified files were not properly preserved on PowerPC-based Macs when using the Incrementalbackup method.I now provide more insight into how to resolve an error message caused by trying to replace an item on the backup volume that is of adifferent type than the item on the source volume.Pre and post-clone script output is now directed to the CCC.log file. CCC also aborts more gracefully when pre-clone scripts exit witha non-zero exit status.The Stop button in the cloning progress panel no longer has focus. Users that press the space bar to wake a dimmed display will bepleased that this action no longer aborts a backup operation.Fixed an issue in which CCC relied solely on the HFS+ volume UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) for identification, which, in rarecases, led to CCC trying to clone a volume to itself.Reformatted the Help content for easier printing. The entire set of documentation can be printed from any page in the documentation.Documentation also now opens in your favorite web browser.

v. 3.1.1 (13), July 7, 2008

Included version 3.0.3 of rsync (minor bug fixes).Fixed a bug in which clicking "Proceed" when plugging in a target volume does not cause the scheduled task to proceed if that task isscheduled to back up only when the target drive is reattached.Fixed a bug in which extended attributes on a file would not be preserved if that file was locked on the source volume (only affectedthe "Backup everything" backup method).Fixed an issue in which CCC would not report success if minor errors were encountered. Upon encountering minor errors, CCC nowreports that the backup task completed, but encountered errors. This also permits any post-backup tasks to occur, such as blessingthe target volume and running post-backup scripts.Fixed an issue in which deferred tasks would run late if the machine slept.Fixed an issue in which the CCC application would not launch if it was initially installed by another user on the system.For the "Backup everything" cloning method, CCC no longer defaults to erasing the target device. CCC will warn if an existing OSinstallation on the target may conflict with the installation that is being backed up.Implemented support for block-level cloning to a disk image (when the source volume can be unmounted) and improved theperformance of file-level backups to a disk image. These changes represent a 2-5x performance improvement.Disk image segmenting now works as advertised.Resolved an issue in which choosing to encrypt a disk image would cause CCC to hang on Leopard.

v. 3.1 (12), March 24, 2008

Implemented rsync 3.0.0 to provide even greater fidelity when backing up using the incremental backup methodImproved the wording of options in the interface to make it more clear what CCC is doingImplemented "bootability" checks -- CCC now reports whether the backup volume will be bootable based upon the options you havechosenCCC now offers a dialog box to opt out of a backup task that is scheduled to occur when the target volume is reattachedResolved an issue in which an existing disk image selected as the target would not get mounted during a "Copy everything" backupWhen creating a new sparse image during a "Copy everything" backup, the capacity of the disk image is now the same as the capacityof the source volume rather then just enough space to accommodate the files that will be copiedResolved issues with installing the Authentication Credentials installer package from multiple source machines on a single targetmachineAdjusted permissions of the archival folders so that admin users can modify their contentsAdjusted permissions of target disk image so that admin users can mount it read-writeResolved an issue in which scheduled tasks would not run upon reboot (Leopard only)Resolved an issue in which a backup using the "Copy everything from source to target" method would fail soon after erasing the targetvolumeCCC no longer allows the scheduling of tasks that erase the target volumeFixed a regression in which the "invisible" flag is not preserved when performing a backup with the "Copy everything" method (Leopardonly)CCC no longer errantly warns the user that specifying "/" as the path on a remote source volume will overwrite the boot volumeResolved an issue in which specifying a path with a space in it would cause CCC to back up to the wrong location on a remoteMacintosh, potentially resulting in data loss

v. 3.0.1 (11), October 23, 2007

Fixed an issue that caused creating new disk images to failFixed an issue that would cause backup to a remote Macintosh to failFixed an issue that caused "Failed to chown" messages to appear in the log and caused CCC to report that the synchronization enginehad failedModification times of folders and applications are now properly preserved when using the "Copy everything" cloning methodFixed an issue in which locked files were not properly deleted (as necessary)Fixed an issue in which CCC reported that it could not enable ownership on the target volumeCCC now explicitly disallows non-HFS volumes (this clears up confusion on what target volumes are supported)Fixed an issue in which CCC errantly reported that it could not archive some items during a "Copy selected items" cloneResolved several localization issues and included localizations for French, Russian, Korean, Swedish, and DutchThe Authentication Credentials Installer package no longer installs CCC's version of rsync into a location commonly in $PATHMinor tweak to improve performance when copying to a sparse disk image created by CCC on a network volumeFixed an issue that would cause some target volumes to not be bootableFixed a cosmetic issue in which the amount of data copied in the CCC.log file was grossly incorrect

v. 3.0 (10), September 18, 2007 (Official non-beta release)

The change list is over 100 lines long, the items listed below are an executive summary

Several performance and fidelity enhancements to the rsync engineCreated a new copy engine for file-level, full-volume clonesResolved issues of certain normally-invisible files appearing on non-booted target volumesNumerous interface enhancements


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Completely redesigned the Scheduler interfaceI now provide additional statistics during the clone (time elapsed and data copied)

v. 3.0-b5 (8), March 5, 2007

Resolved an issue with the "Check for updates now" button returning an error suggesting that you are not connected to the Internet.Resolved an issue where a message indicating that CCC had trouble enabling permissions on the target volume appeared even ifpermissions were already enabled on the target volume.Resolved an issue in which a backup done with the "Copy selected files" option would incorrectly modify the creation date ormodification date of certain files.Resolved an issue where resource forks and other extended attributes would indiscriminately be copied every time a "Copy selectedfiles" task was run, even if those items already existed on the target and had not changed.Fixed a cosmetic issue related to resizing the Scheduled Tasks window.The background tools included with CCC are now built Universal.Resolved an issue where repeating a disk-to-disk clone would fail indicating that you must choose a source and despite that a sourceand target are already selected.Imposed a debug log file size limit.The clone description is no longer updated during the clone (caused unnecessary panic among some people).CCC now properly prevents the unmounting of a source or target disk during a clone.Resolved a minor cosmetic issue related to deselecting items in the items to be copied table.Support for "incremental" backups -- modified and deleted files are saved to a time-stamped directory on the target.CCC prevents a source or target volume from being unmounted during a clone.Support for checksumming a "Copy selected files" operation for users running 10.4.9.A custom build of rsync is now included with CCC that resolves several bugs listed above.Included preliminary localizations for French, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish.

v. 3.0-b4, February 16, 2007 (First public beta)

Support for block-level disk-to-disk clones.Support for backing up across the network.The ability to drill down into folders to select exactly what gets copied and what doesn't (you can drill down indefinitely).A more responsive interface and the ability to stop the clone.More accurate feedback during the clone.The ability to pick up where a previously aborted backup task left off.More information about your disks are available within the CCC interface.Advanced scheduling capabilities -- choose what days to run your backups and how frequently they should run. You can also defer abackup if it starts at an inopportune time.Now you can create a scheduled task that backs up your data whenever you attach a specific hard drive or iPod.


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