Carbon Copy Cloner is a popular software that lets Mac users easily back up entire disks and partitions on macOS. As macOS Big Sur is about to be released to the public, the developers behind Carbon Copy Cloner have now alerted their users about potential compatibility issues with the latest version of Apple’s operating system.
With Carbon Copy Cloner, users can create advanced backups of a Mac hard drive while still keeping it functional and bootable, which is great to ensure you’ll never lose your data. However, macOS Big Sur brings fundamental changes to the way the Mac manages its volumes, and this impacts software like the Carbon Copy Cloner.
One of the main under the hood features introduced with macOS Big Sur is a new protection layer called “Signed System Volume” that seals and encrypts the volume in which macOS is installed. Third-party tools can still make backups of the Mac’s internal storage, but they’re not bootable and some things become inaccessible.
The system now resides on a “Signed System Volume”. This volume is cryptographically sealed, and that seal can only be applied by Apple; ordinary copies of the System volume are non-bootable without Apple’s seal. To create a functional copy of the macOS 11 System volume, we have to use an Apple tool to copy the system, or install macOS onto the backup.
Time machine is the built-in backup utility that is part of the Mac OS X operating system, from 10.5 and onwards. This is very easy to set up, and it’s the minimum backup you should be doing. Time Machine creates a backup copy of your files, and keeps different versions of your files so. What is Carbon Copy Cloner 2.x? The purpose of Carbon Copy cloner is to assist you in backing up or moving your Mac OS X Installaton from one partition to another as easily as possible. It supports: Local HFS Drives; Mounted Disk Image; FireWire disks (including iPods) Any machine that officially supports Mac OS X. Download Carbon Copy Cloner 2. Jan 19, 2020 Time Machine correctly archives your entire startup volume (as well as other volumes you might specify), letting you restore a Catalina drive as you would a previous version of macOS.
The latest version available of Carbon Copy Cloner (5.1.22) works with macOS Big Sur, but it’s only capable of creating copies of the system volume that are not bootable. The developers responsible for the software have claimed that Apple is aware of this limitation and is currently working to resolve it.
Until then, if you really depend on macOS bootable backups generated by Carbon Copy Cloner, you might want to avoid installing macOS Big Sur once Apple releases it for all users.
Apple hasn’t announced when macOS Big Sur will be officially available to the public, but the company will hold a special event focused on Macs next Tuesday — so the launch date is probably close.
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Until macOS 10.15 Catalina, Mac users knew: their startup volume was a single volume, just as it appeared! (Okay, for Fusion drive users, there are two physical drives managed by software to appear as a single “disk drive,” but that’s separate from the data organization that is a volume on a drive.)
As I wrote a couple of months ago, Apple relies on a feature in APFS (Apple File System) called “volume group.” This allows macOS to link together two separate volumes to appear as a single drive. Apple chose this method as a way to enhance security, putting read-only system files on one volume and your changeable data, home directory, preference files, and all the rest on another.
But where does this leave you if you want to clone your startup volume and create a backup that can be used as a one-stop shop for restoring a failed drive or Mac, or which can be booted from? Fortunately, all the software you need is up to date.
Time Machine correctly archives your entire startup volume (as well as other volumes you might specify), letting you restore a Catalina drive as you would a previous version of macOS.
Carbon Copy Cloner ($40) has supported making full clones that boot with Catalina since August 2019. If you haven’t used CCC in a couple of years, you need version 5 for Catalina support.
SuperDuper! ($28) released version 3.3 in November with full Catalina backup and boot support. Its maker, Shirt Pocket Software, has never charged for updates, so if you own any previous release you can download and use the latest version.
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This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader John.
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