Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 7.1.4 with improvements and bug fixes for the drive-cloning and backup utility. The update improves the contrast of options presented in the Backup Volume Setup Assistant, adds an exclusion for an application installation staging folder that popped up in macOS 26 Tahoe, indexes the “current” volume in the Snapshot Comparison window so that its files show up in the search results, fixes a bug that caused some files to appear repeatedly in a task audit, addresses the errant recopying of files by adjusting the calculation of checksums for extended attributes, and resolves an issue that was causing the Save button to reappear immediately after saving a “When source files are modified” task. ($49.99 new, free update, 27.8 MB, release notes, macOS 13+)
I can’t remember, and don’t feel like restarting my Mac to test, so I thought I’d be lazy and ask here. At first, you could boot from CCC. Then because of Apple restrictions CCC became a non-bootable backup. I thought I read that it was able to return to being a bootable backup. What is the state of it now with Tahoe and the latest version?
As has been the case for quite some time, CCC’s ability to make a bootable backup of any system running macOS 11 (“Big Sur”) or later is a best-effort attempt using Apple’s “Software Restore” utility.
If you request this kind of backup, the destination storage device (not just one volume) will be erased and will be overwritten with your Mac’s volumes. The result may or may not be bootable (or usable if it is bootable), depending on a variety of factors like the storage device type, how it is connected, whether you rely on third-party kernel modules, and other factors.
And this is not just CCC. Every backup tool claiming to be able to make a bootable backup of macOS 11 or later has to do it the same way, with the same caveats.