I thought we were talking modern Macs? That’s when the issues surfaced with non-bootable backups. If you are running macOS Catalina or newer, you can’t install, re-install, or update an operating system from a backup of an existing system. Since Catalina, macOS runs from a read-only disk volume. And more recently, from a read-only snapshot of that read-only volume.
Are you familiar with this material? macOS 10.15 Catalina: The Ars Technica review | Ars Technica
Personally, I stopped making bootable clones. When I used to make them, I found performance issues when I restored them and would end up wiping and reinstalling anyways. I keep a Time Machine backup of everything and the files I work with regularly are synced to iCloud, OneDrive for Business (Personal), Amazon S3 (Photography-Side-Gig), or Google Drive (Work).
Yes, I am talking about modern (Monterey) Macs.
Though it is not technically “bootable” if I use CCC and “restore from disk image” does this not restore all of my system privacy/securty settings etc?
I don’t know the answer to your question, but it is interesting to me that the loss of system privacy/security settings has never been an issue for me. I always do a review of system preferences on a new Mac and tweak the old settings and set the new ones.
If your backup is from a machine that is identical in software and hardware to the one that you are restoring to, a “restore from disk image” has at least a chance of success.
I note that the article you cite says things like, “If you have the permission to access the files that you would like to restore…” and “You may not choose the current startup disk as a destination.” These sound like potential problems to me.
I’ve had a GPU failure on my first Mac (mid-2007 MBP 15”), swollen battery on a 2013 MBP, keyboard failure on a 2016 MBP, a “bad logic board” (causing kernel panics during high I/O) with a 2019 MBP 16", and a very strange issue which caused the battery to drain even when the machine was off with a 2018 Air, right out of the box.
In my experience, restoring from a TimeMachine backup or a non-bootable clone restores everything as it was, including all settings.