Problem with SuperDuper

[lbsimon50]

An interesting discussion. Like somebody above said, time to rethink the backup strategy. I liked the idea of having a bootable clone of the production drive, and just restore the Mac if something goes catastrophically wrong, e.g., a complete failure when upgrading the OS. Need to take a closer look at TM.

 

[MacInWin]

An interesting discussion. Like somebody above said, time to rethink the backup strategy. I liked the idea of having a bootable clone of the production drive, and just restore the Mac if something goes catastrophically wrong, e.g., a complete failure when upgrading the OS. Need to take a closer look at TM.

TM is bootable, but only to the recovery screen where you can choose to reinstall the OS and then recover from TM. Useful, sort of, if the drive hasn't failed. But if the drive fails, a clone can be used until the drive is replaced. Now, with the Apple Silicon integrating the "drive" with the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) in the M1, a "drive" failure is basically catastrophic to the entire system, so the value of a bootable external drive is greatly diminished. An M1 system with an internal "drive" failure will require a logic board change to repair the "drive," so a TM backup may be perfectly sufficient. Which makes products like CCC and SD! of less value because even if they *could* make a bootable backup, on an M1 system that basically gets you nothing. (Or very little. I suppose a bootable external could let you complete a task, but you still have to be without the Mac while the logic board is being replaced eventually.)

 

[lbsimon50]

Even though my 2016 MBP has the Intel stuff in it, not the M1, it is still something to think about...

And one thing comes to mind. I also have a functioning unused 2013 or 2014 (don't remember the exact year now) MBP. Can I use it as a backup machine? E.g., install Big Sur on it, and using MA copy the content of my working 2016 MBP onto it? All my files are on iCloud, so if the main drive fails, I can immediately move to the old computer while the newer one is being repaired?

 

[MacInWin]

If it's newer than Late-2013, it might support Big Sur. So that might work. Keeping that machine in sync with the 2016 would be a real pain, I think, but it would be a possibility.

 

[lbsimon50]

I just tried to turn the old machine on. It was connected to power at all times for the last few months, and I have not touched it since. Opened the cover, the display showed the login screen, and then it went blank (black), and would not wake up. Here goes my new backup approach...

 

[MacInWin]

Good luck with it!

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Having used both in the past, I prefer CCC it's faster and can create a bootable clone. Now running osMac 11.3.1

BOTH SuperDuper! and CCC are specifically designed to create bootable clones. It's Apple's Big Sur that has made doing so problematic, not these products.

I've used both, but I've had an allegiance to SD! because I've had it work when CCC has failed (admittedly that was a long time ago), but also because I've found Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software to be amazingly meticulous. I still remember that, when Apple moved to OS X, that Dave's SD! was the very first product that could handle meta-data correctly. Everyone else flubbed it.

It hasn't surprised me that SD! has taken a while to work with M1-based Macs. Dave is adamant that things have to be done to Apple's specs, he doesn't use work-arounds. Dave has worked directly with Apple to get the macOS fixed so that clones are easily possible again.

Both CCC and SD! are excellent products. CCC has more features than SD!. But I trust SD! to be the more solid and safe product in the long run.

 

[MacInWin]

Randy, I use CCC, but have used SD! in the past, so I agree that both are good products. My only thought now is that given the SoC approach, the need for a bootable external backup is greatly diminished. As I said, if the storage area fails, the logic board has to be replaced, not just the drive, so even if Apple lets an external drive boot an M1 system, the probability you could actually use that feature is pretty small. If, indeed, any of the storage on the SoC can be used as RAM, or SSD, or scratch, or system space an any time, then a failure of any is a failure of all. We will see as failures start to show up how useful or useable a bootable backup may be.