Finding UUID Records in Carbon Copy Cloner

[jfhjfh]

I just had to restore a CCC backup to my system drive. Unfortunately I had to delete the original APFS volume before doing this. Now, CCC is treating the system drive as a completely new source because the UUID is different.

Is there any way at all I can at least figure out what UUID the old drive had? It just has to be somewhere in the record CCC has of the task...

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

Because you removed your original APFS volume, the UUID of the new volume does not match. Therefore CCC would treat it as a new one. For more info on what the UUID is, the best place to find out is the CCC knowledge base:

Sitewide Search | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

 

[jfhjfh]

For anyone looking, I did figure this out. I'm sure no one is concerned about spoilers, just keeping it tidy, lol.

Spoiler: What I Found Out

CCC keeps an SQLite database here: /Library/Application Support/com.bombich.ccc/MetaData.db It contains the real guts of the CCC tasks.

In the database, there is a table named VOLUME, which stores information about source volumes, including CCC's unique id as well as the UUID.

In my case, I have 3 entries in the table - 1, 2, & 3 in the "ID" column. As you'd expect, entry 1 was for the system drive in its first incarnation. 3 was the entry for the "new" system drive.

All I had to do was swap the UUIDs for 1 and 3.

Spoiler: How To Fix It - For Experts Only

1. Disable the CCC task for the system drive.
2. Boot to an external drive.
3. Make a document for taking notes. Let's call it "notes."
4. Make a backup of the /Library/Application Support/com.bombich.ccc directory. Don't do anything if you haven't done this. I'd keep it in the same directory & call it "com.bombich.ccc-bak."
5. Take note of the ownership of the com.bombich.ccc directory & its files (probably root:admin); write it down in "notes."
6. Change ownership of the database & the directory it's in: sudo chown -R {your username}:staff /Library/Application\ Support/com.bombich.ccc
7. Open the database: /Library/Application Support/com.bombich.ccc/MetaData.db
8. Open the Volumes table.
9. Check each record's UUID against the UUIDs for your drives. You should be able to figure out which one was for the original system drive - if it's the only entry without a drive that corresponds to the UUID that's a good clue. If you're only using CCC to clone one drive, it'll probably be the one under ID 1, also. The "new" system drive should be the most recent entry, but check it against that drive's known UUID.
10. Make a note of what the two UUIDs are; write them down in "notes."
11. Double check that you have a backup of the com.bombich.ccc directory.
12. Swap the UUID records for the two entries - the "old" system drive gets the UUID for the "new" system drive, and the "new" one gets the UUID of the "old" one.
13. Save and close MetaData.db.
14. Change the ownership back. If the original ownership was root:admin, then: sudo chown -R root:admin /Library/Application\ Support/com.bombich.ccc
15. Reboot back into your system drive.
16. Open CCC, re-enable the task, and start running it. You should be able to tell if it's now treating the "new" drive as if it were the "old" drive.

Hope this helps someone some day.

 

[jfhjfh]

Thanks chscag, glad to be here! Against the odds, there actually is a way to do this - a great relief.

Welcome to our forums.

Because you removed your original APFS volume, the UUID of the new volume does not match. Therefore CCC would treat it as a new one. For more info on what the UUID is, the best place to find out is the CCC knowledge base:

Sitewide Search | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

 

[MarkAllread]

Very clever! Some good sleuthing there.
Isn't there an easier way though? As I'm sure you know, when I change a volume name or if the backup is say on a different drive (eg I might have moved it). CCC says "this volume is missing" and then allows me to choose a different source or destination. Doesn't this solve the same problem or have I missed something? What implications are there?

 

[jfhjfh]

Very clever! Some good sleuthing there.
Isn't there an easier way though? As I'm sure you know, when I change a volume name or if the backup is say on a different drive (eg I might have moved it). CCC says "this volume is missing" and then allows me to choose a different source or destination. Doesn't this solve the same problem or have I missed something? What implications are there?

It did say "this volume is missing," and I chose the "new" one as the source - doing that resulted in CCC backing up the entire drive as if it were new, though. Or if not, a very significant portion of the data. I also back up the sparse image offsite, and just really didn't want to have to deal with uploading the whole thing again. I'm also can't stand to see a problem lack a solution, haha.

You probably know this, but for others - CCC does allow you to turn off "strict volume identification" - matching by just the name and not both the name and UUID - for the destination, but not the source.