Restoring from a Ccc Backup

[Alwyn]

Mike Bombich said in a recent email:

”Don’t ever be tempted to restore a CCC backup onto a clean installation of macOS, though, that won’t work”.

I’m not quite clear what he means by a clean installation. Suffice to say that I did a CCC backup today and tried to restore to my internal HDD and it doesn’t work. You can select what you want but you can’t do a full restore.

Does it’s mean that you can only restore to a drive that you have erased? If you do that the Mac will revert to its original OS. I can’t remember if my 2017 had High Sierra or Mojave?

If I did erase it and I formatted to the previous format HFS+ would this prevent me from upgrading to later OS? I think an upgrade automatically formats to APFS which is fine for SSDs but not for HDDs.

 

[MacInWin]

Is there a context for that one sentence from Bombich? It seems like it belongs in a bigger discussion. Otherwise, it make little sense as is.

And if by "full restore" you mean the OS as well, that has been an issue for a while, AFAIK.

 

[Alwyn]

Is there a context for that one sentence from Bombich? It seems like it belongs in a bigger discussion. Otherwise, it make little sense as is.

And if by "full restore" you mean the OS as well, that has been an issue for a while, AFAIK.

Hi Jake,

it does indeed belong to the penultimate reply to a number of emails. For full details please read my post re my 2017 iMac slowing down to a snail’s pace. Thanks to Randy I realised that old iMacs with HDDs formatted to APFS become slower as the OS is updated, in my case to to Ventura 13.6.1.

Having slept on the question it dawned on me that the word restore is not relevant in the context of CCC. All I needed to do was to back up from the latest set up. So what is the purpose of CCC's Restore option?

I did have a slight hiccough when I tried to install Ventura on a second SSD. At some point, I think when I initiated a backup to this Crucial SSD, I was asked if I wanted it to be encrypted. This required a password but by using the decrypt option I was eventually able to complete the installation. In fact I'm using it now.

Although it has worked satisfactorily to date I was advised that the larger capacity San Disk Extremes are unreliable. So I will probably update it from time to time in case the Crucial SSD fails.

I also wonder if Time Machine is really necessary. I have very occasionally 'updated' a document and realised that I had overwritten something unintentionally. It's quite useful for recovering the bit that was overwritten because you can use the calendar to recapture something. I don't think that works as well with a CCC backup.

Now that I have two bootable SSDs I can probably ignore the internal HDD but I would still be interested to know if it can be reformatted to HFS+ without being reformatted automatically when updated to a post High Sierra OS.

Colin.

 

[IWT]

I also wonder if Time Machine is really necessary.

Well; the benefits are, firstly, that it's a part of the Apple ecosystem. It's built in to all Macs, only requires a suitable External Hard Drive (EHD) and then you're ready to go.

It pretty well backs up everything except the OS; including all the general settings, passwords, WiFi & Bluetooth settings etc. Great for transferring everything to a new Mac and at minimal cost.

And remember, any EHD can fail at any time, so having two backups on separate EHDs (each different in the way they work) seems a good plan to me.

And you don't need to BU to Time Machine hourly - you can do this manually, say twice a week in your case.

Worth reconsidering, perhaps?

Ian

 

[Rod]

Can I just say that “restoring” and “cloning” are two very different things.
With earlier macOS versions “restoring” a bootable clone to a new Mac was a matter of cloning in reverse, with the same requirements.
That is, remove old internal drive, replace with new (blank) internal drive, boot from CCC clone and “clone” the CCC copy to the new internal drive, not "restore".
If the internal drive had data on it, just like creating a new bootable clone it must be erased at the media level first. Hence restoring would not be the correct process.

 

[RadDave]

Well; the benefits are, firstly, that it's a part of the Apple ecosystem. It's built in to all Macs, only requires a suitable External Hard Drive (EHD) and then you're ready to go.

It pretty well backs up everything except the OS; including all the general settings, passwords, WiFi & Bluetooth settings etc. Great for transferring everything to a new Mac and at minimal cost.

And remember, any EHD can fail at any time, so having two backups on separate EHDs (each different in the way they work) seems a good plan to me.

And you don't need to BU to Time Machine hourly - you can do this manually, say twice a week in your case.

Worth reconsidering, perhaps?

Ian

Well, I'm with Ian concerning TM - have used it since 2013 and will continue to (and I do duplicate drives, now only SSDs, for both TM and CCC). Earlier this month I bought a new M2 Air and did a fresh TM on my old MBPro and used it for the setup - worked like a charm (just one minor issue described HERE). Dave

 

[Jimmysb]

And remember, any EHD can fail at any time, so having two backups on separate EHDs (each different in the way they work) seems a good plan to me.


Ian

You are going to be really unlucky is your TM EHD fails at the same time, you actually need to use it, but them that is "sod's law".

 

[MacInWin]

And you don't need to BU to Time Machine hourly - you can do this manually, say twice a week in your case.

That is true, and I used to just use TM once a day, using TimeMachineEditor to set it. Then Apple added daily/weekly options and I've dropped TME for now. But, in thinking about it, one of the real benefits of TM is that you don't have to remember it, just set it and let it do what it does. So, I've gone back to the hourly backups, even though I don't have any critical stuff that really needs that kind of redundancy. TM doesn't take up much room or time to run that way, and it prunes automatically after a few days. It's a pretty good tool.

 

[MacInWin]

You are going to be really unlucky is your TM EHD fails at the same time, you actually need to use it, but them that is "sod's law".

That happened to me. Internal and backup drive failed the same day. Lost about 4000 irreplaceable photos. Now have layers of backups, some directly attached, some networked and some in the cloud. Yes, I'm paranoid!

 

[IWT]

You are going to be really unlucky is your TM EHD fails at the same time,

Correct, no doubt.

But I have two TM backups, each on their own EHD, and CCC on its own BU.

In addition I use iCloud to back up everything it can, along with a Photos BU to iCloud and a monthly manual BU of the Photo's library to another EHD.

Apple Music is backed up twice via iMatch and via Apple Music App.

Every month or so, I copy my Documents Folder to yet another EHD.

I use paid-for Dropbox and OneDrive as temporary or longer term storage.

Yes, I'm mad, actually terrified, in case I lose things that are important to me.

But Jim B, I'm content with my "obsessive" strategy. I may need to lie down now!

Ian

 

[Jimmysb]

That happened to me. Internal and backup drive failed the same day. Lost about 4000 irreplaceable photos. Now have layers of backups, some directly attached, some networked and some in the cloud. Yes, I'm paranoid!

Correct, no doubt.

But I have two TM backups, each on their own EHD, and CCC on its own BU.

In addition I use iCloud to back up everything it can, along with a Photos BU to iCloud and a monthly manual BU of the Photo's library to another EHD.

Apple Music is backed up twice via iMatch and via Apple Music App.

Every month or so, I copy my Documents Folder to yet another EHD.

I use paid-for Dropbox and OneDrive as temporary or longer term storage.

Yes, I'm mad, actually terrified, in case I lose things that are important to me.

But Jim B, I'm content with my "obsessive" strategy. I may need to lie down now!

Ian

My photos, the only things that are truly irreplaceable for me, are also backed up to the cloud, most other things can be regenerated if I really need them.

 

[Rod]

”Don’t ever be tempted to restore a CCC backup onto a clean installation of macOS, though, that won’t work”.

I'm guessing that you could 'clone' a CCC backup to a Clean installation of macOS though.

The point is, it's not really necessary. I've done this several times over the years. Just connect the EHD with the clone of your data files and simply drag an drop the contents of folders like Photos, Music, Documents, ect, on the EHD to their corresponding folders on the "Clean" installation.
As for third party Applications, standalone ones are fine, like FAF, Coconut Battery, and App Cleaner but others which came with installers I usually downloaded again from their developers.

 

[Alwyn]

Correct, no doubt.

But I have two TM backups, each on their own EHD, and CCC on its own BU.

In addition I use iCloud to back up everything it can, along with a Photos BU to iCloud and a monthly manual BU of the Photo's library to another EHD.

Apple Music is backed up twice via iMatch and via Apple Music App.

Every month or so, I copy my Documents Folder to yet another EHD.

I use paid-for Dropbox and OneDrive as temporary or longer term storage.

Yes, I'm mad, actually terrified, in case I lose things that are important to me.

But Jim B, I'm content with my "obsessive" strategy. I may need to lie down now!

Ian

 

[IWT]

I think these Links will answer your questions - including which Format (in your case APFS, but suggest you read the article in full)

Back up your Mac with Time Machine – Apple Support (UK)

If you have a USB drive or other external storage device, you can use Time Machine to automatically back up your files, including your apps, music, photos, emails and documents.

support.apple.com

Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac

Use Time Machine on your Mac with a Time Capsule and with USB and Thunderbolt disks.

support.apple.com

Ian

 

[Rod]

as Ian has said, your answer is yes and yes.
Erase and format as APFS in Disk Utility.
Partition in Disk Utility and name each partition.
When the SSD mounts you will see it as two seperate drives on your desktop.
Ensure that when you eject your drive you choose to eject both drives. You will get that option on screen.