Just a question for Carbon copy cloner users how does it save your files? is it like Time Machine that keeps on saving until you max out your space? or it just clones your current files only when you instruct it? the reason why I am asking is that I am planning to have 3 partitions on my external hard drive (1 TB) 300 gb (for time machine) 200 gb (fat32) - for PC files 500 gb (for MAC OS files and Carbon copy cloner) and I plan to use CCC on my third partition - was thinking that it might be like TM that will keep on saving files till it gets full? (by the way my internal hard drive is 160gb) Thanks in advance!
I myself only does Time Machine on my 500gb EHD. Been happy with it all along. I would suggest to just keep one back up application it just would make life so simple. Just my thought
IMO, it would be not good to have your CCC partition on the same drive with Time Machine. If you already have Time Machine, you don't need CCC on the same drive. And it's not good to have both on the same drive because if the drive conks out, both your Time Machine and CCC backups are goners. I suggest you separate the two in different drives. CCC can copy your whole drive, as a bootable clone of your disk. I'm not sure of it's other features.
@mares I would suggest that you make the CCC partition equal only to your internal hd because CCC is just an exact copy of your internal hd... no more, no less. Your idea of the FAT32 partition depends on your needs so that would be fine. Give the rest of the partition to TM. TM and additional storage for your Mac files can share a single partition, not with the CCC partition as this may cause unexpected results when you boot from it. e.g. 160gb CCC • 200gb FAT32 • 640gb TM & Mac files would be ideal.
Just to answer your questions... CCC does what it stands for - to 'Carbon Copy' and 'Clone' your internal HDD. You have a choice of copying all files every time you use CCC or just copy only what has changed in your internal HDD i.e. files that were edited/changed and new files that were added since the last time you backed-up. CCC execution can be scheduled as well so you can perform automatic backups. You can dictate the time or instance it will run. In my case, I have a WD 1TB mybook as my backup drive. I divided it into 2 partitions: about 950GB for my files and bootable 50GB for my system backup. Then I setup 2 schedules for CCC execution: (1) it will run and backup my files every time I connect my mybook, and (2) it will run and backup my system files at 12am every 3 days. Hope this helps.
Just want to add what my system looks like. I have a 1TB HD divided into 2 partitions (TimeMachine and general backups) connected to my Mini via firewire. I have another firewire 500GB HD divided into 2 partitions for CCC (one partition for the Mini, and the other for my MacBook). I backup with CCC every 3 - 4 months and before any major update. The nice thing about using CCC is that I have bootable clones for both 10.6.1 and 10.5.8. Since I'm not having any problems with Snow, I'll probably trash 10.5.8 in the near future.
Personally, I do a Carbon Copy Clone every night to my WD Studio Edition. You never know when your drive will die. I work on my files on a constant basis and want to have a bootable clone ready to work with and with minimal differences when the unthinkable comes. Learned my lessons and will never risk having a 2-3 month old backup. Time Machine backup resides on my Seagate FreeAgent. I use it to backup incremental changes and when I need to get an old file or revert to an older version/change. Only using Time Machine means you will have a slower time getting back to work. You have to get a new HD, install Mac OS X, then reinstate the TM backup.
I always have Time Machine on. Whenever at home, I have a powered USB hub connected to my MacBook. On that hub is a 250GB WD Passport dedicated to Time Machine backups. I only use CCC when I'm upgrading the HDD or upgrading the OS version. If I had a spare EHDD, I'd do what kyapjoco does, although on a weekly basis and not daily.
If I had to choose, CCC. I've rarely gone back to retrieve older/previous version of files. The main problem with Time Machine is that I can't go back to work right away if ever my internal HD goes down thus my choice.
I have a question: if I wanted to make a bootable version of my back-up, will the files from my external HDD get erased? I'm planning to use Carbon Copy Cloner and I think that's what it's trying to say.
@triballistic You have to create a partition solely for CCC use and your external hdd should have enough disk space equal to your internal hdd (working boot drive). Creating another partition will not erase the existing partition provided that you have that enough disk space, otherwise, you have to re-format/re-partition your external hdd.
hi guys. I accidentally deleted an application from my mbp. The good things is I have a backup via carbon copy cloner. Is there a way to copy this back to my mbp? I tried reversing the process (Source = external hard drive, Destination = mpb), selecting only the app that i need, but it seems CCC doesn't allow this. Thanks.
it should allow you to move any file from your source to your destination via CCC. I did this two days ago since my MBP had a problem booting. What I did was copy the System Folder, Application and Library folders to my MBP without overwriting other files on the destination folder. And after minutes, I have my MBP back.
