The last time I saw any info on this was from May 4 years ago and I now own an M3 MacBook Pro and my SuperDuper subscription will not work on M3 without upgrading, so I can go either way, I would love to get the opinion from this group of power users of which app you prefer. Thank you.
SuperDuper has free lifetime upgrades, so there shouldn’t be a reason not to upgrade it.
When I first switched to Mac, SuperDuper was a paid product, like it is now, while Carbon Copy Cloner was free. I went with SuperDuper because I felt future support was more likely to occur. Since then Carbon Copy Cloner became paid. As far as I can tell, they are equivalent – I’ve never felt any reason to switch and I presume CCC users feel the same about their choice.
3 Likes
What are you trying to achieve. Without understanding your need, any recommendations would be a shot in the dark.
1 Like
Both CCC and Super Duper get great reviews. I know that CCC has (and probably Super Duper as well) undergone substantial upgrades in the last couple of years due to changes in macOS and Apple Silicon Macs.
My experience with CCC support:
Support received from Bombich (developer of Carbon Copy Cloner) recently was excellent. After upgrading to version 7 and doing daily backups for months, the backups started to get slower. Support from Bombich was requested, eventually (but quickly) transferred to Mike Bombich himself. Problem was identified (obscure bug under certain conditions) and solved with a CCC software update.
Obscure details, if you are interested:
*
It turns out that something in my computer (Mac Studio, M1 Max 64GB, 4TB), for unknown reason, generates many empty folders with a very high folder/file ratio. As a result, CCC’s “advanced” setting “Maintain Record of Transactions” timing parameter exceeded CCC’s standard threshold so a warning is shown, potentially with a task abort. Mike Bombich communicated clearly by email, requesting a couple of logs. He was able to identify the rarely-occurring bug and resolve it quickly.
My support experience was great. It was a pleasure to (briefly) work with the actual developer and participate in the problem-solving process that lead to a quick resolution.
Daily CCC backups from my 4TB SSD (~1.5TB used, 2.4 TB available) to a 4TB external USB SSD, now take about 1 minute to complete. Very impressive.
Looking over past receipts, I paid about $20 to upgrade to version 6 of CCC about 3 years ago, and another $25 this year to upgrade to version 7. This is for a family/household plan. As far as I know you can continue to use a previous version without upgrading, at least for a while.
2 Likes
Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software
SuperDuper! Shirt-Pocket Software
It is not that hard or expensive to try both and see which one you like. I’ve done that and my clear preference is for Mike Bombitch and his Carbon Copy Cloner.
Or read each app’s website and select the one that matches your vibe. You can always switch.
2 Likes
I want to have a complete bootable backup so that if my computer crashes, I can plug in my ssd into another Mac and have a working clone of my computer. What do you recommend?
Both SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are able to “clone” your Mac. I am using Carbon Copy Cloner for my “clone” backup.
But there is something to keep in mind: Apple has changed their Startup Disk security control significantly with Apple Silicon Macs:
A Mac with Apple silicon doesn’t require or support a specific media boot policy, because technically all boots are performed locally. If a user chooses to boot from external media, that operating system version must first be personalized using an authenticated restart from recoveryOS. This restart creates a LocalPolicy file on the internal drive that’s used to perform a trusted boot from the operating system stored on the external media.
Which means that if the internal SSD of a Mac is faulty, the Mac won’t boot. Also not from an external drive.
That was different in the Intel Mac era.
More from CCC on that:
We present this functionality in support of making ad hoc bootable copies of the system that you will use immediately (e.g. when migrating to a different disk, or for testing purposes), but we do not support nor recommend making bootable copies of the system as part of a backup strategy . (…) In the past, a “bootable backup” was an indispensable troubleshooting device that even novice users could rely upon in case their production startup disk failed. The reliability of Apple’s External Boot solution has waned in the past several years, however, and the situation has grown starkly worse on the new Apple Silicon platform. Apple Silicon Macs will not start up (at all) if the internal storage is damaged or otherwise incapacitated, so there is very little value, if any, to maintaining a bootable rescue device for those Macs.
This is why I still “clone” my Macs, but I do not create bootable clones. My “clones” contain all my data. If my Mac fails, I would boot the new Mac and use the backup from the old one to retrieve the data from the faulty one.
7 Likes
I suspected this might be the case, hence why I asked,
You are no longer able to boot from an external disc on Apple Silicon Macs. It doesn’t matter what software you use to create a clone or backup.
The best you can do is backup your data so you can retrieve it in the event of a total internal disk failure.
1 Like
I’ve used both for a while, starting with SuperDuper and then switching over to using CCC almost exclusively. At one point Bombich Software were quicker to update CCC with support for the new OS (I can’t remember when this was exactly as Apple often breaks low-level system things with the new OS and tools such as these need major updates), and CCC is a bit more feature-reach and gets more frequent updates, so I somehow stuck with it. Their knowledge base is also exceptionally useful.
1 Like
Thank you everyone for you excellent replies,. So it appears that the best I can hope for is back up all my data and none of the applications. I am already using DropBox and Google Drive does that mean that TimeMachine would be enough? Of should I look into using a service like BackBlaze? I am running my business off my MacBook Pro and I want the security that I have a backup plan that I can count on in the case of a failure. What do you think?
I use Time Machine and Backblaze. Both have saved my bacon.
2 Likes
I would agree that it should not be either Time Machine or something like Backblaze. Use both.
Ideally, it is not a bad idea to always follow the 3-2-1 backup rule:
- Always have three copies of your data: the original data on your MacBook and at least two copies.
- Store your data on two different types of media to enhance redundancy.
- Keep at least one of those copies off-site to ensure data safety in case of emergency.
Via What is the 3-2-1 backup rule? and other websites.
So, in your case, the data on the MacBook Pro, combined with a Time Machine backup on an external drive (!) and BackBlaze (off-site) would fit the minimum implementation of the 3-2-1 rule and should protect you against data loss in almost every scenario.
P.S. I still love CCC or SuperDuper clones as a further option on top of that, even if those clones are not bootable any longer.
2 Likes
I would add to the 3-2-1 rule that cloud storage (DropBox, iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc) is generally not considered off-site backup. They are file sync services, not backup services. If a file is lost/deleted/corrupted on the local machine, then that change will get synced to the cloud. While it is true that some cloud services provide limited version history, it is not long-term like a true backup system. Therefore, if our files are in cloud storage, you also need a separate off-site backup to meet the 3-2-1 rule. That off-site backup could be through a service like Backblaze, or it could be a NAS (or similar) at a family or friends house, or it could be some remote server you custom configured in some server farm.
TimeMachine, CCC and SuperDuper are all local backup tools according to the 3-2-1 rule. You can use more than one of them for redundancy, but its not required by the rule. You will need some additional third-party solution for the “off-site” part of the rule. Something like Backblaze or Arq are common solutions, but there are others.
3 Likes
Absolutely.
I was referring to BackBlaze as the off-site backup service.
So, in your case, the data on the MacBook Pro, combined with a Time Machine backup on an external drive (!) and BackBlaze (off-site) would fit the minimum implementation of the 3-2-1 rule…
1 Like
And it is important to realize that even though you can’t boot from the external you can use Migration Assistant with the external drive to do a restore once you have a bootable internal. So definitely useful!
6 Likes
SuperDuper is not giving me the lifetime- When I place my reg code it tells me that silicone machines are not covered under that policy.
I had the same issue. I had to pay for an upgrade when I moved to Silicon. I must’ve bought SD easily 10 years ago if not a lot longer so I had no issue paying. (But no judgement on anyone that doesn’t.)
1 Like
Well this had me baffled. I’m running the latest version 3.8 on my M1 Mac mini server computer. And it’s using a license I purchased July 23 2011. The code is marked as Intel Architecture however.
After scouring the website, it looks like you have to pay for a new license if you want it to run natively. This I found out in their forum.
1 Like
No, you can back up your /Applications folder and most if not all of your settings will be in the <yourHomeFolder>/Library folder.
EDIT TO ADD: If you bought all your apps from the Mac App Store, you would download them again rather than restoring them from backup.
2 Likes
I use Backblaze, CCC, and Time Machine. Back in the day I considered both SuperDuper and CCC, choosing the latter because it could do more frequent backups. I back up to 4 EHDs, two 5TB magnetic drives, and two 2TB SSDs (T7s). The SSDs are used exclusively for backups, but I use the magnetic drives for storage (in separate containers from the backup data) as well as for backups. I limit the magnetic drives to 5TB so I won’t have to use external power, thus reducing the number of wires involved. I have Time Machine set to backup every hour to alternating drives, one SSD and one magnetic drive. I have CCC similarly set to backup every hour alternating between the other two drives. That way if an EHD goes bad, I can reformat or replace the bad drive, but still have complete backups locally. Eventually, the SSDs will fill up, and I am monitoring to see what happens. I hope that the older backups will automatically “fall off” and that I won’t have to redo anything.
If I need to restore a single file Time Machine is a little easier to use than is CCC, and of course, restoring from and SSD is much faster than restoring from a magnetic drive. With CCC there has definitely been a learning curve for me, but it has been worth it. The CCC email support is the best support service with which I have ever dealt. You get a prompt reply from the developer, and the problem gets solved. Actually, he doesn’t charge enough for CCC, but don’t let him know.
4 Likes