Catalina & Carbon Copy Cloner

[pine man]

Just thought I'd let all you CCC users about todays big muck up!

I know I shouldn't do it but I can't help fiddling and I messed up big time BUT it gave me a chance to see how CCC deals with Catalina.

My Mac is backed up daily to CCC on an external SSD. I was a bit concerned about the two back ups it now shows, with one being data, but I needn't have worried. Just as before you only actually have one source and one destination to deal with and just over 5 minutes later all was exactly as it was last night.

Brilliant bit of software and it works pefectly with Catalina - if only everything else did?

 

[MacInWin]

@pine man, Catalina actually creates two volumes on the boot drive now. One for system files that is very secure and one for user data to which users have access. In displaying the boot drive to the user, Catalina combines these two to make it look like one, just as before, but it is actually two. When CCC makes the backup and you look at it with Finder, you see both because the CCC drive is NOT the boot drive. If you booted from the CCC drive, then you would see only one there, but two in the internal drive because now it is NOT the boot drive. I don't know why Apple chose to do that, but that's how they designed it. So technically you have two sources and two destinations, but the OS merges them seamlessly on the boot drive.

 

[pine man]

I shouldn't have shouted so soon!

Everything is running exactly as it should and, according to Disk Utility, I have two main drives, Macintosh HD - Data and Macintosh HD. This is confirmed in CCC BUT, and this is where it gets a bit confusing, if I look in Finder I have two main drives and BOTH are called Macintosh HD and are identical in content. There is no Macintosh HD - Data in the side bar. If I go to Disk Utility and click on the Macintosh HD - Data disk and get it to open in Finder it does so with the correct contents but still doesn't appear in the side bar.

To sum it up I have two instances of Macintosh HD in the side bar of Finder and no instance of Macintosh HD - Data.

Any thoughts?

 

[MacInWin]

As I said, the OS combines MacintoshHD and MacintoshHD Data into one presentation. DU can show both, as they are separate Volumes in the Container. I guess with the CCC drive attached the OS is also combining the external two Volumes to show them as well. If you unmount the CCC drive does the icon go away?

 

[pine man]

Hi

Unmounting the drive makes no difference.

I still have two Macintosh HDs showing whereas prior to the restore I am pretty sure (but beginning to doubt myself) that I had both a Macintosh HD and a Macintosh HD - Data drive showing exactly as it does in both Disk Utility and CCC. I'm pretty damned sure I didn't have two instances of Macintosh HD!

I'll stop my backup tonight and drop a line to Mike Bombich I think.

 

[MacInWin]

Have you rebooted with the CCC drive disconnected?

 

[pine man]

Have you rebooted with the CCC drive disconnected?

Just tried that and still got two identical Macintosh HD drives

 

[pine man]

I have found the Macintosh HD - Data drive. It is at Macintosh HD/System/Volumes.

This doesn't answer the question as to why there are two Macintosh HD drives displayed.

Can anybody confirm that both Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data are displayed in the sidebar of Finder please?

Edit: Just did a few searches on line and got a look at someone elses Finder. One entry for Macintosh HD and no entry for Macintosh HD - Data. So that answers one question. Having played around with Finder I inadvertantly dragged and dropped one copy of Macintosh HD onto the other and it disappeared!!!

All is now well here in West Sussex.

Thanks, Jake, for your help and advice.

 

[IWT]

Can anybody confirm that both Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data are displayed in the sidebar of Finder please?

Quote: macOS Catalina runs on a dedicated, read-only system volume called Macintosh HD. This volume is completely separate from all other data to help prevent the accidental overwriting of critical operating system files. Your files and data are stored in another volume named Macintosh HD - Data. In the Finder, both volumes appear as Macintosh HD.

Taken from: About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina - Apple Support

HTP, pine man

Ian

 

[pine man]

Thanks for that Ian.

Every time I read that article I get more and more confused. Does it mean that there are two entries called Macintosh HD but one is actually Macintosh HD - Data. Or does it mean that there is one entry called Macintosh HD containg both volumes?

I'm pretty sure I only had one Macintosh HD prior to the restore and I ended up with two identical ones with identical contents.

I feel a double G&T coming on and then mybe I'll be able to make sense of it!!

 

[pine man]

When this 'problem' reared it's ugly head I sent a note to Mike Bombich at CCC.

I have just had his reply, which is summarised as follows; One entry of Macintosh HD should appear in Finder and no entry for Macintosh HD - Data should appear. As far as two entries of macintosh HD go, others have noticed two entries for the startup disk in Finder's sidebar and suggest it might be a Finder bug.

Now back to that G&T!!

 

[KennyC]

Just to add a note about CCC. Just got done chatting with them after purchasing CCC and was told to wait before using CCC with Catalina because they are still testing but they did say there will probably be no issues.

EDIT: Now the site says fully qualified for Catalina which is not what the chat said to me.

EDIT2: My bad, I got that info from OWS support where I bought my Voyager drives. Sorry folks for the confusion, doing to much at once.

 

[MacInWin]

I booted into Catalina on a USB thumb drive and here are the results:

and


The first is a shot of icons on my desktop. The one labelled "Catalina" is the usb stick from which I booted, the other is Macintosh HD, as you can see. The second image is of Finder of the Macintosh HD, showing that it merged the two Volumes on the Container into one icon, so that System and Library folder show as well as the Users folder.

I think the first one, "Catalina," is a bug in that it is showing the boot drive, but maybe that's what Apple intended. Seems redundant, but hey, I'm not making the decisions.

 

[pm-r]

As far as two entries of macintosh HD go, others have noticed two entries for the startup disk in Finder's sidebar and suggest it might be a Finder bug. /QUOTE]


That makes sense and sounds like a valid explanation, and not too surprising considering Apple's latest OS goof-ups and hitting scores!!!



- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

I don't know, Patrick, is it a bug or not? As you can see from my images, I booted from a USB device named "Catalina" and the merged system and data volumes are called Macintosh HD. To me that's actually two different things, in a sense, as one is the name of the physical drive and the other is the merger of two Volumes ON that device. For 99% of the users, the two are the same, but as can be seen, in my case they are actually two things.

Now if it were me, I'd find a way to hide the name of the boot device and just show the merged Volume, or even better, since I cannot write to the System Volume, just hide it and only let me see the Data Volume. I wonder if there is a new configuration setting in Finder to do exactly that? I may have to do some exploring...

 

[pm-r]

Now if it were me, I'd find a way to hide the name of the boot device and just show the merged Volume, or even better, since I cannot write to the System Volume, just hide it and only let me see the Data Volume. I wonder if there is a new configuration setting in Finder to do exactly that? I may have to do some exploring...

Now that Jake, would be so logical and make so much sense, but you know it just would not happen.

Apple has been hiding most of a user's folders and data for years with all their latest previous Mac OS versions, well leaving all the system in libraries fully exposed, completely illogical to me. But then again, I'm not Apple and I certainly don't think the same way they do with what they do with what they do.

How's that for a horrible redundant grammar line...???

PS: What folders are showing as visible in a Catalina Users usernamme folder??? Is the username Desktop folder and others still made indivisible to the user???



- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Apple has been hiding most of a user's folders and data for years with all their latest previous Mac OS versions, well leaving all the system in libraries fully exposed, completely illogical to me.

I will slightly disagree with that statement. Apple hid the ~/Library, not "most of a user's folder and data." In fact, I could say that NONE of my data is hidden, just some semi-system files that happen to be stored in ~/Library. What is in the System folders at the root of the drive is visible, but protected by SIP, unless the user disables it, so the term "fully exposed" is not quite accurate, either.

 

[MacInWin]

For this:

PS: What folders are showing as visible in a Catalina Users usernamme folder??? Is the username Desktop folder and others still made indivisible to the user???

what shows in Users is the name of all users, and under the username, all of the folders (less Library), but the individual user can only see the details of their own folder and Shared, at least on the test system I have. I don't know what you mean by, "Is the username Desktop folder and others still made indivisible to the user?" Assuming you meant "invisible" those folders are not invisible and have not been so ever, as far as I can remember. Only ~/Library is hidden in more recent versions of the OS.

 

[pm-r]

I don't know what you mean by, "Is the username Desktop folder and others still made indivisible to the user?" Assuming you meant "invisible" those folders are not invisible and have not been so ever, as far as I can remember. Only ~/Library is hidden in more recent versions of the OS.

I was referring to the normally invisible folders, at least since Sierra OS I believe, are those such as Desktop, Documents etc in the username folder that can be made visible when pressing the command+shift+period keys.


- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Nope. Those have been visible, and still are, without any strange keys. Where are you getting this information? I've never heard of it before. The only normally invisible folder was Library, that was hidden, I think in High Sierra for the first time. But that could be wrong, as I don't really remember when Library was hidden for the first time. But the other have never been hidden, ever.