Bombich Software today unveiled a new version of Carbon Copy Cloner, a Mac OS X utility designed to make Mac to Mac cloning and backup extremely simple. The new version features a new interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure more intuitive and more responsive. Users have better control over what gets backed up, and are provided with detailed information about the progress of their backup. The new version also provides support for block-level clones, a cloning method that is unsurpassed in providing data fidelity.
The synchronization feature received the most attention in the update. Previous versions required the download of additional third-party software. Version 3.0 includes an optimized version of rsync, an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer. By leveraging rsync for incremental backups and synchronization, users get the highly anticipated feature of network backups.
The scheduling functionality of Carbon Copy Cloner also received a makeover. Backup tasks can now be scheduled on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or you can indicate that a backup task should run when the backup device is attached. This is especially useful if you use your iPod for backup. Carbon Copy Cloner will actually recognize iPods as well, allowing time for the iPod:iTunes synchronization to complete.
Carbon Copy Cloner is now available as a Universal Binary. As with previous versions, Carbon Copy Cloner is labeled uncrippled shareware — try the full-featured product until you trust it, then consider a donation to the Bombich Software Tip Jar.
More info and download link here.
Yes! This guy has been a resource for me for years. I’m glad he dropped a new version of CCC on us.
Getting this out before the “Time Machine” hammer drops is a really good idea. Go Bombich!
This is great software. Glad they fixed it and improved it
Woaaaah ! This is Universal Binaries at work. On my 24″ iMac it lanches in like half a second. That’s fast
I have been using the 3.0 beta and it has performed great.
This is great software.
How does it compare to Apple’s Backup program? Also free, can also do Network backups, also quite reliable.
I guess an actual comparison to Time Machine would be handy. I’m not at all certain I’m going to be a big fan of TM – having spent my life as an IT guy and learned the value of “backups” long ago, this “backup-for-dummies” software seems like it will be merely intrusive to me. But … I’ve been wrong before.
Dave
Carbon Copy Cloner
was the first and best donation-ware open source program to completely copy entire Mac hard drives.
SuperDuper! copied the open source code of Carbon Copy Cloner, added a complicated mickey mouse interface and resold it as their own with a active guerrilla market campaign on Mac user bulletin boards and the Apple forums which they (and their marketing drones) have been kicked off many places for spamming.
Cloning Mac hard drives is entirely possible from the command line, but complicated. Carbon Copy Cloner eliminated the hassle, optimizes the hard drive with the clone and really doesn’t ask for whole lot in return but you donate a few bucks.
People need to clone hard drives because in deadline situations it just takes too long to rebuild a dead drive, especially a boot drive with complicated reinstalls and updates of commercial software. Just option boot from the clone and your back at work, only losing what you didn’t save from the last backup or clone.
Most advise backing up files daily and cloning entire boot drives weekly. In fact booting from the clone is a excellent way of optimizing, repair and recovery of the original drive instead of a boot c.d. which can’t hold all the drive recovery programs.
Does this mean he’ll actually stop by his support forums and answer a few questions? I didn’t think so.
Apple is getting into the backup market for a reason.
Trusted Computing using EFI on Intel based Mac’s utilizes a separate partition on the drive to store copy protection for developers and media folks to use.
In fact the EFI specs are not controlled by Apple, but by the UEFI and the Trusted Computing Group
The reason Apple is doing Time Machine is to reduce the market need for cloning software like Carbon Copy Cloner as to protect the EFI drive partition and Trusted Computing.
As you can notice it’s been 20 something years of Apple and not one worthy backup solution to another drive. Something that could have been easily incorporated into the OS to “mirror” a boot drive to another every 3-7 days or so.
A “Apple backup drive” could be sold separately and easily hooked up to any Mac, because they all have fast interfaces. Apple could have taken care of the problem with a System Control panel or automatically for a newbie that just hooks up the Apple Backup Drive to the computer. It could even have been hardware encrypted automatically.
Apple could have made a fortune with such a device, selling one with every Mac sold.
But they didn’t, but now they are giving one for free.
I guess you can sell the rat now right?
Best utility ever. Period.
I’m glad this update was finally released.
The Mac Genius at my local Apple Store told me about this program years ago. He said they use CCC regularly for backing up customer’s Macs during repair and told me that Bombich is an Apple employee in charge of the Disk Utility program. I don’t know if that is true, but I like cloning a drive directly with CCC better than the Disk Utility 2-step process of making a disk image of Drive A and then restoring from it onto Disk B.
I switched to SuperDuper a year ago when it became clear that CCC wasn’t going to be supported or upgraded much. It’s a good utility, but not as good as SD. Sounds like now it may merit a another chance.
One of the most useful, simplist-to-use, most important PGMS for OS X ever made.
Thank you.
Very well written. I have used the old version 2 to clone many types of Intel Macs without a problem.
Works great.
RE:
>Cloning Mac hard drives is entirely possible from the command line, but complicated.
AND
>but I like cloning a drive directly with CCC better than the Disk Utility 2-step process of making a disk image of Drive A and then restoring from it onto Disk B.
people, creating a block level clone of your drive is entirely possible with one trip to disk utility. no disk images, no terminal.
1. boot from your install disc (or a third bootable drive)
2. open disk utility, click on the restore tab
3. drag the drive you want to clone to the source pane
4. drag the drive you’re cloning onto to the destination pane
5. check “erase destination” and check “skip checksum”
6. click restore. that’s it.
what you can’t do in disk utility is do incremental backups. CCC can do a lot more, esp. now with rsync built in. i will definitely check it out.
I’m not at all certain I’m going to be a big fan of TM – having spent my life as an IT guy and learned the value of “backups” long ago, this “backup-for-dummies” software seems like it will be merely intrusive to me. But … I’ve been wrong before. —DLMeyer
As a long-time Mac consultant, I know one thing for sure: Almost nobody backs up their data. Businesses may do regular backups, but individuals do not—even if they are running small businesses with the help of their Macs. This being the case, anything that makes the backup process easy and automatic for these users is potentially of the greatest value. As things stand, the only individual users who back up regularly are the ones who have already lost valuable data.
Time Machine is not aimed at IT professionals or anyone else who already knows how important it is to back up their files. It is aimed at the army of lazy, uncomprehending home users who never back up anything but nevertheless become extremely distraught when they lose their precious data—which can happen to anyone at any time for a wide variety of reasons.
Yes, I do believe Mike is an Apple employee. Saw him at an old “Apple Roadshow” conference for Xserve and OS X Server. His software is essential if you’re a Mac IT support person. His CCC coupled with NetRestore is a godsend. I couldn’t do the work I do without it.
Yeah, a Mac user on a Mac forum saying that SD is a Mickey-Mouse interface. *laughs* Man, that’s better than Zune Tang.
@BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots
I’m rather new to the computer world ( no I’m not a kid ) and very recently learned about back ups. Checked out CCC, Backup and SD.I chose CCC for a complete backup with continuing incremental for my desktop, the primary workhorse and .Mac Backup for occasional iLife backups for my MB Pro, the toy. SD actually did look kinda goofy to me, CCC is clean and simple.
Donationware like Carbon Copy Cloner is reason number 843,961 to be on a Mac on not Winblows with its crappy free/donationware.