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Archive - Guy Serle
• 2003

    
Carbon Copy Cloner - Review
Guy Serle
writer - active
Monday, 05/01/06


Carbon Copy Cloner v 2.3
Company: Bombich Software
Price: Donation ware (in other words…free)
http://www.bombich.com

Hardware Requirements: Any PowerPC Mac (G3/G4/G5) capable of running OS X 10.2x-10.3.9, 10.4.6)
Local HFS+ formatted partition or hard drive.

I imagine that most people who come to this site are Mac fans and/or Mac users. Far be it for me to criticize Apple and its hardware policies, but desktop machines need big drives. Apple in the past didn’t always do that for you except when you custom ordered machines from their website. That’s all good and well, but sometimes there’s not much choice when you buy a machine from them. Like when you buy a refurbished Mac. You pretty much have to just deal with whatever the default RAM or hard drive is installed.

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So why am I even bothering talking about this? Because I bought a refurbished 1.8 GHz iMac G5 for my kids JUST before the Intel switch was announced. I love this machine and dearly wish it was mine, but if I did the switcheroo at this point my wife and kids would most likely demand my head for repayment. None of which has anything to do with Carbon Copy Cloner so I’ll move on.

Like I said, I love this machine, but it only had an 80 Gb hard drive of which 70 Gb was filled very quickly by my younger son and his various dinosaur and Garfield movie and DVD projects he created with the iLife 06 suite. So I needed a new and bigger hard drive. What I didn’t want to do spend a huge amount of time copying files and programs between the new and old drives. I just wanted my stuff transferred. Of course there are various expensive utilities you can use and if you are particularly geeky you can probably use Terminal, but I’m not and I didn’t.

I did what most cheapskates do; I searched the web for an appropriate, low-cost (i.e. cheap) solution. I found one with Bombich Software’s “Carbon Copy Cloner”. Folks, let me tell you, I have not found an easier to use piece of utility software than this. Let me take you through the steps required to move everything that was on this machine’s old drive to the new one.

Step 1: Download Carbon Copy Cloner and install it on the iMac.
Step 2: Connect a newly formatted external FireWire (Has to be FireWire for a bootable drive) Drive that I had doing a whole lot of nothing.
Step 3: Start Carbon Copy Cloner and select the source and target drives.
Step 4: Type in my Admin Password and hit Start.

That’s it. Carbon Copy Cloner’s defaults will be good enough for most folks trying to copy data over from one drive or partition to another.

Once the data was transferred, I opened the iMac G5 and replaced the SATA 80 Gb drive with a 250 Gb one. After putting it back together, I restarted the iMac using the FireWire external to boot from. I used Apple’s Disk Utilities to format the new bigger drive and once that was complete, I used Carbon Copy Cloner from the external to put all the data from the old drive to the new one. I then shut down the iMac, disconnected the external drive and rebooted from the new internal. Everything came up as if nothing had changed other than having a lot more space. Isn’t that what most people want from a utility like this? I suppose I could have saved a lot of time by using a FireWire External that uses SATA, but I didn’t have one, nor was I going to go out and buy one.

Like with anything concerning moving what could be irreplaceable data, back-up anything you can’t afford to lose. No matter how good ANY software is, there is always the chance for this to go drastically wrong. You have been warned.

Pluses: So easy even I could use it without scratching my head and going “huh?” Essentially free (though send Bombich software something, ANYTHING for software so great).

Minuses: Not a Universal Binary or compatible with the new Intel Macs.
According to Bombich Software’s site, some people have had problems with their Classic environment after use, I didn’t.
People who use Fire Vault may end up with some issues. I don’t use it so didn’t worry about it.
According to Bombich Software, some people have experienced problems with some FireWire external drives. They recommend using a newly formatted drive or partition (as I did) to avoid this problem most of the time.


I give Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner a 4 out of 5


Article Discussion
MyMac welcomes reader feedback to our Article Discussion area below. Please REGISTER to become a free contributor, or LOGIN.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner before switching to SuperDuper! in June 2004 and have never looked back. Your "Folks, let me tell you, I have not found an easier to use piece of utility software than this" comment makes me wonder if you've ever tried SD! since it's just as easy to use as CCC in the way you described. And I trust SD!'s Smart Update more than the psync script CCC uses. And SD!'s support is there when I need it, not when someone on the CCC forum may or may not get around to helping me. For me CCC only "wins" on price (and I donated).

Recommended articles for anyone who's interested in learning some specific details about the integrity of several current OS X backup utilities (including CCC and SD!):

The State of Backup and Cloning Tools under Mac OS X
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-state-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/

Mac Backup Software Harmful
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/

That type of information has long been needed to help people (who understand it) make more informed choices about which software to use with different backup strategies. And raising developer awareness with the intention of improving product integrity can help anyone benefit from higher standards even if they don't know or care about the details.

Posted by sjk


sjk,
First off, please relax. I wasn't slamming SuperDuper (which I have not tried), I was reviewing Carbon Copy Cloner. My review simply was stating that this was a great piece of donationware that did exactly what I wanted it to do. I wasn't comparing it to anything else because this was a review of CCC.

I have since gone to the site that hosts SuperDuper and in most ways according to what I read it is superior to CCC. Its free version does exactly what CCC does with a similar easy to use interface. Plus, it is an Universal Binary which means that Intel Mac users can use it (they can't use CCC). For the more advanced features, you must pay $28. That's fine because its advanced features are very impressive and looks to be worth the price.

Without actually having tried SD, I would probably rate it higher than CCC, mostly because it is a Universal Binary. Either one seems like a great product for what people need.
Posted by Guy Serle


Relax? Never thought you were intentionally "slamming" SD, just questioning if you'd ever used it and, if not, hoped my comments might be helpful to you and other readers since I've used both products. Sorry if I sabotaged your "CCC exclusive" review with some comparisons.
Posted by sjk


I've not used CCC, so I don't have any experience with it. I've been using SuperDuper for a few months now. What a great utility! I love it.
Posted by VariantFrequencies


I have both, but I myself have been using Apple's Backup that is free for .Mac users. I may have to give these a try instead...
Posted by Tim Robertson


I have used both CC and Super Duper.
I agree that Super Duper blows CCC away.

try it, you'll like it...

Rich
Posted by Weatherguy


Warning, if you are considering using this application, beware of two things:

1) There is a list of caveats that the support folks suggest to follow, but you don't see until you go looking for them in the right places. In other words, if you just go ahead and clone following the basic directions, and then discover you have a problem, and then search for answers, you will be "treated" to a list of things you should have known you should have known before doing anything so stupid as to try to use Carbon Copy Clone.

2) In the support forums, if you ask any stupid questions, or have other problems that display your ignorance, you will be treated to the tag-team of "Andreas" and "Baltwo" who seem to think treating dumb users by expressing and displaying the mentality of a pair of WWE (used to be WWF) performers, including encouraging the same rude behavior from the audience, is the best way to deal with some users. Real "Pros" they are; kinda sorta like those other "Pros".

Consider SuperDuper.
Posted by dancingbrook



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