Making a backup: Time Machine, SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner?

By On March 4, 2010 · 26 Comments

Question: I want a reliable backup method. What should I do?

Answer: Many people in our group believe that the very best way to make a backup is to clone your hard drive on an external hard drive. The replica of your disk allows you to restore it quickly after a crash, or to use it as a replacement startup drive if you need to get working quickly despite a crash.

Once you have an external drive set up and plugged in, either in a USB or FireWire port, you have many interesting options. When you get your external disk, you may want to split it up in two volumes. One for cloning, and one for Time Machine backups.

Cloning with Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is a respected piece of software. The small application will make a fully bootable clone of your hard drive. Its advantage over simple file backups is that if your disk fails, you can restore it in no time on a new drive, and start up your Mac from the clone.

After downloading it and copying it in your Applications > Utilities folder, launch the application. Select your Source Disk, which is your startup volume. Select your Target Disk, which is the external volume to make your clone. Choose the Backup everything option to make a bootable clone. Then, click on the Clone button.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is free from Bombich Software, but making a donation to its creator is a way to encourage its continuous development.

Cloning with SuperDuper

SuperDuper is comparable to Carbon Copy Cloner. It will make a bootable clone of your drive.

After downloading it and copying it to the Applications folder, launch it. Besides the Copy option, select your startup volume. Then, on the right, select your external volume besides the “to” word. Besides “using”, select Backup – all files.

As for Carbon Copy Cloner, this will create a clone that you can restore quickly.

Super Duper is free from Shirt Pocket, and you can pay to unlock features such as scheduling and “smart updates”.

SuperDuper

Which one to choose

Since many people who read this article come in to know which one they should choose between CCC and SuperDuper, what we can tell you is that both wdo a great job for cloning. There are fans for both and they both deserve being recommended for a cloned backup.

Time Machine backups

The Time Machine technology that Apple ships with Mac OS X since the first Leopard version is a different beast. With its hourly backup, it is more of a file synchronizer than anything else so you might want to use it as a complement. It will keep an hourly backup for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month and weekly backups for previous months.

Time Machine addresses the “oops, I just deleted an important file” problem. Its incremental backups allow you to go back in time to restore a file or folder. And it works automatically, every hour, if you leave it turned on.

Just pull down the Apple menu and select System Preferences. Then, click on the Time Machine panel in the System area. Flip the switch to On.

Time Machine

The final word

Are we recommending doing a whole lot of backup? Perhaps. But once you have a hard drive failure or accidentally erase important files, you will give yourself a high-five for the preventive measures.

 
  • John

    One note on Time Machine — I think this article gives the impression that Time Machine cannot be used (or is not useful) in the context of restoring your computer after a hard drive failure. This isn’t exactly right. The backup made by Time Machine is a complete back-up of your hard drive (or at least it’s as complete as you want it to be). So if your internal hard drive fails, and you need to restore your system to what it was, you can do that with the Time Machine backup. The “catch” is that it requires you to first go back to your original system software disks, and then when installing the OS, tell it to restore from a time machine backup. This is a little bit more cumbersome than restoring from a clone of your hard drive. The tradeoff, though, is that the day-to-day process of using Time Machine is completely transparent and automatic to the user, which means that the process of *creating* backups is easier with Time Machine even if the process of *restoring* backups is harder.

    Personally, i think Time Machine is the more appealing backup solution. We spend far more time *creating* backups than *restoring* backups, so it’s better to make the creation part as easy as possible, both in terms of saving effort and because if it’s automatic and easy, then you’ll always have an up to date backup from Time Machine, whereas with the other approach your backup is only up to date if you clone your hard drive very day.

  • John Dingler

    Hi John,
    Good addendum to this fine article by Michel Munger.

    Just purchased Drive Genius 2 which is also supposed to do a backup, or “clone,” a drive. It’s approx. $100 but does maintenance, repair, and other things as well, hence the price.

  • Bill Morgan

    I prefer to make backups using “Restore” in the Disk Utility app, which is located in your “Utilities” folder in the Applications folder. It clones a perfect bootable copy of your hard drive, and can be used to restore from that backup, or to create a second [third or forth, etc...] boot drive, that can be used to experiment with updates. This is great for Pro Tower owners that install multiple drives. Installed two more hard drives, then copied my HD using “restore”, then created a RAID 0 [striped set with two drives, then "Restored" the RAID set with the copy. I recopy once each month, but also, backup to two USB external drives the same way. [I always have 3 backups].

  • DCJ001

    Better than making backups using “Restore” in the Disk Utility app, CCC’s Scheduled Tasks are great for cloning drives on a scheduled basis. I clone my internal drive at the same time every day. My daily clone just copies what has changed on the drive since the previous day’s clone. It takes about ten minutes for me.

    If you have multiple drives that you’d like to clone on a regular basis, CCC’s Scheduled tasks would do this in the background while other tasks may be accomplished.

  • darren

    Superduper allows you to clone your hardrive to a time machine volume so no need to partition the backup drive

  • Ken Cohen

    I make a lot of use of Pathfinder, which is a very good Finder replacement. However, it does not seem to work with Time Machine (Time Machine simply stops working), so Pathfinder users should probably look at the other options.

  • DCJ001

    darren says:
    March 4, 2010 at 17:14
    Superduper allows you to clone your hardrive to a time machine volume so no need to partition the backup drive

    But, from what I understand, if you clone your hardrive to a time machine volume so no need to partition the backup drive, the clone keeps adding new files. But the files that are deleted and trashed on one’s internal drive remain on the SuperDuper clone and are not deleted when the internal drive is cloned. It seems that it has to be this way in order for the Time Machine back up to stay on the same external drive.

    If I’m wrong, please explain why. Thanks.

  • Skyalmar

    I use Pathfinder too. But you can still switch to the Finder to run Time Machine.

  • Dave

    I recently used Time Machine to restore two iMacs that had burned up their internal disc drives (thanks to an employee who decided to save $$ by turning off the AC for a three day weekend). I use standard TM hourly backups to a Drobo Pro hooked to an Xserve Time Machine host. These restores were 100% successful and only took about 45 minutes each. I like TM best because I don’t have time or desire to run backups of 16 computers onto 16 drives using stand alone disc cloning utilities. My next step is to clone the backups to another site using fiber optics based ethernet..

  • John Baltutis

    Just a couple of points. Time Machine backups are not bootable and not verifiable until restored; whereas CCC and SD! full backups/clones are immediately verifiable by booting into them. Thus, the TM process takes at least double the time and requires booting with the install disk to restore. Disk Utility’s restore function requires copying the entire source volume, precluding incremental updates, and takes much longer to do than either CCC or SD!

  • Tundern

    darren wrote on March 4, 2010 at 17:14

    “Superduper allows you to clone your hardrive to a time machine volume so no need to partition the backup drive.”

    Bad news, Darren. Time Machine took over my external HD, storing SuperDuper! backups) when Leopard installed with HD plugged in. At that time I knew no better. Eventually Time Machine backups filled up the ext HD and the mess was beyond a repair. Had to buy a new ext HD, start again with TM switched off, then wiped the old ext HD and had two for what it was worth.

    Only had to start the computer once from the ext HD and the SuperDuper! backup worked perfectly. Don’t know whether it was a clone or not, just that it worked!

    And I’ve never had a need for Whoops! I just wiped the wrong file, so SuperDuper! suits perfectly still.

  • Jacques

    There are some great utilities out there other than SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner, but those are the only two that ever get mentioned.

    I’ve been a fan of Déja Vu for a long time. But, after years of using Déja Vu for folder backups and SuperDuper! for drive clones, I’ve now replaced both with Decimus Software’s Sync Pro. It’s the fastest, most flexible backup app I’ve yet seen. It leverages the tech behind Time Machine to make incremental backups super quick. For power users with complex backup requirements, this is a great tool.

  • michelmunger

    Hello Jacques. You might want to know something here. This site doesn’t pretend to post a comprehensive review but it sums up the content of interesting – and potentially recurring – discussions we have in our discussion group.

    And in the past, SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner have been suggested and used extremely often as examples of backup software.

    Whenever a reader suggests another solution, as you did, we accept the comment in addition.

  • David

    I too use SD and TM on a partitioned Ext HDD and it works without my intervention, everything is scheduled. Very happy with the ease of use and the comfort of knowing I have a full bootable backup.

  • Tundern

    Got to partition your external HD before you let Time Machine near it. As implied earlier, I did not know that when I installed Leopard with the ext HD plugged in, so TM just took over and wrote its files wherever it fancied until the ext HD was full. Burnt fingers in that experience!

  • http://www.theresaminnette.com Theresa Minnette

    Once you clone using CCC, how do you actually do a restore from that external source? I assume you boot from it and then run CCC again to clone from the external to the new drive you’re replacing. Is that right?

  • michelmunger

    Yes, Theresa. It’s the best way to do things.

  • dana

    Does anyone know if either SD or CCC work for backing up an EXTERNAL HD to ANOTHER EXTERNAL HD? If not, any other suggestions? Also – need suggestions for same for OFFSITE backup (External HD to Offsite/online backup service) Thanks.

  • michelmunger

    It clones any drive, Dana. Since CC is free, I suggest to give it a try :-)

  • Michelh

    Thank you for your advices. I am interested in cloning my computer to a NAS drive. I have been using SD which seems to work well with a Firewire connected external hard drive, but not well in cloning a computer hard drive to a NAS drive. SD works ok with other volumes, but I am not sure if that is because my other volumes are smaller and contain data files only. When using SD with a NAS drive, you have to clone to a sparse image or sparse bundle.

    Can anybody comment please? Particularly if CC works with NAS drives?

  • RodJ

    I just recently installed CCC and it works like a charm with my Seagate NAS 110 drive. It does create a sparse image and it seemed to copy a few bytes less than what is on my MBP hard drive but all my files are there. Anyone who uses CCC know why it’s sparse image is a few bytes less than it’s source?

  • JQK18

    From FAQ on Bombich web site:
    “The disk usage on the target doesn’t match the source — did CCC miss some files?”

    http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/source-and-target-capacity-mismatch

  • DaleC

    Thanks for an excellent write up and some great responses!

    I use Carbon Copy Cloner to a FW HDD and Time Machine to a Time Capsule on my iMac at home. CCC for the obvious bootable cloned drive and Time Machine, not for the “oops I deleted a file” (that’s what Trash is for right?), but the “F&*K, I haven’t run CCC for a week!”.

    On my MacBook Pro, I use Carbonite and Time Machine when traveling. About twice a week, I set up a local network with my Time Capsule for the workgroup to share a printer and NAS. I occasionally run CCC to an external hard drive and carry original Snow Leopard discs.

    If you think this is overkill, I used to do a bit-level backup of my server every night and had enough tapes that I always had daily backups for two weeks at hand. I took the previous nights tape home with me each day so that I always had an off-site copy. The server was a RAID5 array. That data was too valuable for anything less because my entire business was operated on it.

    Can you tell I come from a MS/PC background and have had a total crash (or two, three…) before? :-)

  • Mark Schilling

    I’ve have used CCC to make a bootable backup from an external drive should the internal drive on my MAC G-4 turn to toast, but I have a significant concern (and question).

    When I connect my external drive to my MAC, CCC automatically deletes anything on the external drive that was deleted from the internal drive since the last clone and it does this automatically, without actually “doing at clone.” The external drive seems to see what’s on the internal drive instantly and decides that it must delete any files it contains which are no longer on the internal drive. I have nothing set on CCC to automatically tell it to do this.

    To put it another way, if I have two identical folders up on the screen — the one on the internal drive and the copy on the external drive — and I drag a file into the trash from the folder on the internal drive, the identical file in the external folder disappears as well. If I drag the file from the trash back into the internal folder, the file pops up again in the external folder. Again, I’m not actually “doing a clone.” This happens instantaneously.

    I was hoping to have a bootable external clone that would add things additively from the internal drive. If that’s not possible, I would certainly like CCC to cease automatically deleting files from the backup drive that aren’t on the source drive unless I actually do a new clone.

    Anyone have a clue about this? Many thanks!

  • Bobby

    What happens to copy protected software on on TM, SD, and CCC software? When I started up using a bootable clone made with Apple’s Disk Utility connected to my same model backup laptop (Powerbook G4) which had none of the protected software installed, the copy protected software such as Final Cut and Final Draft in the bootable clone didn’t open.

  • Don

    What if I am using a WD external drive which offers the ability to make a backup with WD Smartware – is this any good? I have already bought SD and wanting to clean things up before Lion is released.
    Once you have a copy how to you boot to it to check it?