Carbon Copy Cloner and the Safety Net

[pine man]

Prior to upgarding to Mojave, my CCC scheduled back ups I had a list of _CCC SafetyNet folders in them, which took account of changes to my system when carrying out a daily scheduled back up.

Having upgraded to Mojave I decided to start from scratch with my scheduled back ups as I wanted to re format my external drive to APFS. Since doing this I notice that there are no more _CCC SafetNet folders despite changes having taken place on my system and the SafetNet instruction being ticked.

Has anybody else noticed this?

 

[chscag]

I just checked my CCC backup external drive which has been formatted to APFS. Like you, I started from scratch after installing Mojave. I just checked the drive and it shows the SafetyNet folders just as it did before I reformatted the drive to APFS. I'm sure you've double checked the options in CCC to see that the SafetyNet is on?

Note that when making a completely new backup with CCC even with the SafetyNet on, a folder will not be created until there is actually something to save to there. How long has it been since you've changed over?

 

[pine man]

Thanks for replying.

I have checked and SafetyNet is activated but the back ups have only been running for couple of days and any changes would be minimal. I have uninstalled an app and a couple of files will have changed. I am not sure how sensitively SafetyNet reacts to small changes so I’ll give it a few more days before I panic!! Then I’ll report back.

 

[MacInWin]

Pine Man, I have the same thing happening. Safety Net is on, but no folder being created that I can see. I looked at hidden files and nothing there, either. Let me know what you find out when you do.

 

[chscag]

Well, that makes two of our members (Pine Man and Jake) that are having difficulty with the SafetyNet feature of CCC not working.

Might be worth sending Mike Bombich a support email to find out if there is some reason or incompatibility in play?

As I stated to Pine Man in my reply above, SafetyNet continues to work as before. I made sure to check after reading his post.

 

[pm-r]

Might be worth sending Mike Bombich a support email to find out if there is some reason or incompatibility in play?

He's already got some pretty good explanations at his support site, but shouldn't hurt to ask I guess:

Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1
April 24, 2018

Added support for creating a snapshot on an APFS-formatted source at the beginning of the backup task. This snapshot is then mounted and used as the source for copying files. By using a read-only volume as the source, we avoid rare, but potential conflicts that can occur during the backup task if files are modified while being copied.
CCC's SafetyNet feature is now built on top of APFS snapshots when the destination is an APFS volume and snapshot support is enabled for that volume.
CCC will create a snapshot on APFS destination volumes at the end of a backup task to establish a point-in-time restore point.
CCC offers a highly-tunable snapshot retention policy that allows you to define how long snapshots will be retained (hourly, daily, weekly), and also allows you to define a minimum amount of free space to retain on the volume.
CCC's Disk Center offers detailed insight into the snapshots that CCC and Time Machine have created on your APFS volumes. Quickly see how much space those snapshots are consuming, and delete one or many snapshots with the press of a button.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/release-notes

and:
Everything you need to know about Carbon Copy Cloner and APFS
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everything-you-need-know-about-carbon-copy-cloner-and-apfs





- Patrick
======

 

[lclev]

I did not reformat my CCC backup drive for my MBP and I do have SafetyNet folders with 9/30/18 as the last time accessed. I did a CCC backup after installing Mojave but the file system on the drive is still HFS+.

Not sure if I should reformat it and let it start over. I tend to go with if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I will do a quick reboot to see if it is working though.

Lisa

Edit: Well I am back and currently running off my CCC backup. Which is good to know and since it ain't broke.... ;D

 

[MacInWin]

He's already got some pretty good explanations at his support site, but shouldn't hurt to ask I guess:

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/release-notes

and:
Everything you need to know about Carbon Copy Cloner and APFS
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everything-you-need-know-about-carbon-copy-cloner-and-apfs





- Patrick
======

Patrick, pretty much everything in that quote from Bombich is useless. When setting up a backup, you get to say Safety Net On or Safety Net Off. No choices presented for how long, how much, or anything else.

CCC offers a highly-tunable snapshot retention policy that allows you to define how long snapshots will be retained (hourly, daily, weekly), and also allows you to define a minimum amount of free space to retain on the volume.
CCC's Disk Center offers detailed insight into the snapshots that CCC and Time Machine have created on your APFS volumes. Quickly see how much space those snapshots are consuming, and delete one or many snapshots with the press of a button.

Nope. not there in 5.1.5. Preferences has ZERO on snapshots, and there is nothing in the individual tasks to do anything with snapshots. Frankly, CCC is becoming a huge disappointment to me. I am going to have to look for an alternative that actually does what it claims.

 

[pm-r]

Patrick, pretty much everything in that quote from Bombich is useless.

Yikes, that's pretty disappointing and discouraging Jake. I would have expected Bombich and his crew to do much better than that.

I haven't been exposed to his CCC 5.x version as I'm still using CCC version 4.x.





- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

OK, did some digging and there is a way to find the snapshots. Not obvious, but in the sidebar of the main window there is a listing of drives attached. If you click on one of them, the main window is replaced by the snapshot information on that drive, along with information about the tasks that read from or write to that drive. I did't see how to tune the snapshot retention, and the snapshots seem very small compared to what the email reports say has been moved, but maybe they have some incredible compression going on.

Still, I'm not as confident of the utility of the safety net in this configuration as it was in the old. I think for historical backups, TM is going to be the main tool, with CCC relegated to just an emergency bootable disk. That's a change in priority for me, as I previously depended on Safety Net more than TM, but I've moved my TM backup to a RAID array, so I have multiple copies of the TM database. I'm paranoid about losing drives, having already lost an internal and backup drive on the same day, losing pictures and other data because of that failure. So now I have multiple copies of my backups and multiple backup methods and my important stuff is stored in four different locations, including one outside of my house. As I said, I'm paranoid, but that doesn't mean they aren't out to get me!

 

[IWT]

Jake,

As you've done a lot of your own research on Snapshots etc, and you are a thorough man, the linked video below is probably well known to you.

I found it helpful in that Mike Bombich starts from a zero knowledge base and works forward from there. I also like a visual demonstration of how to do something as well as a printed article.

If you don't find it adds much to your own experience, at least it may aid others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buM2HzDJKU4

Ian

 

[pine man]

MacInWin

I did't see how to tune the snapshot retention,

Your research was most helpful, and to add to it, when you have the snapshot data showing there is a 'customize' button at the bottom right which allows you to tune things

 

[MacInWin]

Pine Man, thanks for pointing that out. Looked at the video referenced earlier and he didn't address how the snapshot is so small but the backup is large. I will have to do some testing (on another day) to see if I can learn to trust CCC's Safety Net in this new operation. For now, history will be in TM, current in CCC. I can live with that a while.

 

[IWT]

Hi Guys

Read this - it seems to explain everything. See particularly the section: SafetyNet snapshots vs. Backup snapshots

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/leveraging-snapshots-on-apfs-volumes

Hope this helps - not having good day on the assistance front so far!

Ian

 

[chscag]

Thanks Ian.

I believe we discussed CCC snapshots some time ago. When I first noticed my drive space being used and inquired of the system looking for Time Machine snapshots, I discovered 10 or 12 snapshots that couldn't be blamed on Time Machine. I sent an email to Mike Bombich and he responded with a detailed explanation of CCC snapshots and how to remove them.

I have since turned off snapshots in CCC but have kept the SafetyNet on which still seems to be working okay with Mojave. Personally, I don't find the snapshot option in CCC useful and feel that it has added complexity to a utility that was at one time very simple and easy to use. Just my opinion though.

 

[MacInWin]

And here is one more reason for not using Snapshots with CCC. I looked where CCC was storing the snapshots on both my internal drive and on the destination external drive. Turns out they both point to /private/tmp and then folder inside that location. So, basically, the so called backup is stored on the drive being backed up. Which means when the drive fails, you lose all the snapshots. I'm turning it off in CCC. I think Bombich has made a fundamental error in making snapshot the default, particularly where it's being put.

EDIT: I just turned off Snapshot on both source and target drives in CCC, then deleted the snapshots from CCC on both. I recovered 200 GB on the internal drive, 400GB on the external target drive. I wondered where my drive space went!

 

[chscag]

Like I stated above Jake, I don't find Snapshots useful and have had them turned off ever since High Sierra and APFS of my internal SSD. And I do not like Time Machine making snapshots on APFS drives whether attached or not. It used to be that Time Machine would only make local snapshots if the external drive was not attached, but now, it makes them regardless. I have had to remove the snapshot after each Time Machine backup.

I believe it only does that though with APFS formatted drives.

 

[MacInWin]

Well, for TM I use TImeMachineEditor to run TM just twice a day, noon and midnight. So I have two snapshots, and only two at any time. I can live with that. I don't need hourly backups, nothing I do is that critical.