If you have a chance to test it sometime, I would be interested in the results. My main use of bootable clones in the past was to easily have the exact same system on two desktops in different locations.
Perhaps you did not understand my question. Can you create a bootable backup on an Apple Silicon machine running 15.2 to a blank disk (not a disk erased by SD!) using SuperDuper!, or have you not tested that scenario?
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As I understand it, macOS installations are architecture-dependent, but are universal within an architecture.
So you should be able to boot a clone of an Intel Mac on any Intel Mac (assuming the hardware is compatible with the version of macOS). And you should be able to boot a clone of an Apple Silicon Mac on any Apple Silicon Mac.
But there’s a big difference between should and reality. More specifically, there is firmware beyond macOS (installed in the T2 on Intel Macs or in special APFS containers on an Apple Silicon Mac’s internal SSD). If the installed firmware is older than the version expected by macOS, you might encounter problems.
If the firmware is newer than the version provided with the macOS release, it should work, because firmware images are supposed to be fully backward-compatible. But again, reality may be different. I don’t know how much backward-compatibility testing Apple actually does.
In other words, if you think you want to do this, test it out before you have an emergency that would force you to depend on the behavior.
And you should just use the clone long enough to get your failed Mac replaced/repaired. Then perform a clean install of macOS on the hardware and use Migration Assistant to restore your contents. DO NOT try to clone your external boot device to a modern Mac’s internal storage.
Before I even attempt it, I want to know if there are any risks and/or issues doing that… I do not want to have issues on my end.
Also, if anyone can chime in here and answer Tom’s question about using a bootable clone to start up another Mac, that would be good.
And finally I’ll ask for the third time: is there anyone else who uses SuperDuper! with OS 15.2 that has had success making a bootable clone like myself? Can’t seem to get anything definitive out of anyone.
Yes I did, but to one of my Samsung SSDs. It worked as expected. Not sure though why that would make a difference, ie, doing the backup to a blank SSD versus first allowing SupeDuper! to erase that backup partition, and then do the backup.
I think I did this long ago: my desktop was down for repair or replacement, so I booted a MacBook Pro using a clone of the desktop.
But…
- I don’t know if this works with Apple Silicon (and T2 chips?), which brings in the question of ownership. Where is that stored? Is in in the clone or somewhere else?
- Even if it did, I don’t know that I’d want to do this on an Internet connected machine.
The problem is that these days, the machine is synching to online resources, such as iCloud. What happens when a different machine is trying to sync using data from the cloned machine? Does it get confused? Does it create a bunch of conflicts? Does it corrupt the data?
It isn’t so much that the different machine is an iMac vs. a MacBook or something like that. It is different because it has a different serial number, and that’s used as a key identifier.
Thanks Michael. I suspected there could be issues, and I certainly do not want to risk it.
Interesting! For a number of years I have booted my two Intel iMacs from an external ssd, and just took the ssd along when I traveled between them, so I always had the same system. I updated the ssd rather than the internal drives when new MacOS versions came out, and never had any problems with email or other icloud syncing. So I was wondering whether that might still work with Silicon iMacs. Will have to test I think.
Because on macOS there isn’t really a single partition - there are volumes - including one with “-data” appended to the name of your internal volume (traditionally “Macintosh”) that holds all writable files, and I’m wondering if SuperDuper was simply erasing only the “Macintosh-Data” or the whole volume. If it’s what I think, that would explain your success - you manually installed MacOS to the external and if that read-only volume was retained then it would explain why the disk remains bootable.
See How do APFS volume roles work? – The Eclectic Light Company for more detail.
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A question for all the people who make bootable backups on a weekly schedule, which includes @david_blanchard, @takecontrol2, @mschmitt, and @akent35. What’s your plan for recovery?
I never said I make bootable backups! The question only mentioned “backup methods.” I stopped making bootable backups when CCC started having trouble with them. My primary machine (a MacBook Pro for the past couple of years, a Mac Mini before that) gets backed up to Time Machine on an NAS, to the cloud via Backblaze, and to a backup disk using CCC. I also have a MacBook Air that has so few unique user files on disk that it gets backed up to Time Machine only. If something happened to my primary machine, the Air could keep me going until the primary machine was repaired or replaced. (This happened to me once when the graphics systems on my eight-year-old 2010 MacBook Pro failed suddenly.)
If you have to employ another restoration step, such as bringing files back from Time Machine, I’m not seeing the benefit of the weekly schedule. You’d have to put effort into manually identifying which files were out of date and restoring just them, which is slow and error-prone. It’s hard to see that being a big win over just reinstalling macOS and restoring everything using Migration Assistant.
I don’t depend on my computers for my work; I’m retired, and even when I was working for others, I used their systems. My backup strategy is arguably overkill for me — though I doubt I’d switch to daily physical backups if I were working intensively on a daily basis. The physical backup is basically protection in case the Time Machine backup and the Backblaze backup both become unavailable. It’s not a likely scenario.
With these weekly backups, do you have to connect the backup drive manually each week? One of the reasons I recommend nightly duplicates is that the drive can remain attached all the time such that it’s less likely that you could forget.
I do plug it in every Sunday, yeah. I suppose I could keep it attached to the Kensington dock that everything else (monitor, speakers, doc scanner, Ethernet) is connected to, but I’d rather leave the port free. When I forget to attach it, CCC reminds me that its backup couldn’t complete. It’s no biggie.
Doug Miller wrote “Because on macOS there isn’t really a single partition - there are volumes - including one with “-data” appended to the name of your internal volume (traditionally “Macintosh”) that holds all writable files, and I’m wondering if SuperDuper was simply erasing only the “Macintosh-Data” or the whole volume. If it’s what I think, that would explain your success - you manually installed MacOS to the external and if that read-only volume was retained then it would explain why the disk remains bootable.”
No, I NEVER said I installed Mac OS FIRST on that external partition. And I of course understand the structure on my internal APFS-formatted SSDs. I’ll explain my situation again.
For each of the Samsung SSDs I use for backing up each of my Macs, there are 2 partitions. One is entitled “MacMini Backup”, and the other :MacBook Air Backup". Then of course within each of those partitions there are the Volumes for the Macintosh “System/OS” and the “Data” one. When I connect the SSD to the appropriate non-DFU port and start up SuperDuper! (SD) for making the bootable backups, I let SD erase and format the volumes within the appropriate partition. It then proceeds to do the backup, first of course for the OS/System Volume from my internal SSD, and then the Data volume from that same internal SSD. That is way I have always used SuperDuper!, even in the non-APFS days.
So, is that now all clear? Again, I do not manually install the OS (OS 15.2 currently) onto either of those partitions, nor have I ever done that (except recently to test out a suggestion from David Nanian). But even after that test, I erased and formatted that entire SSD, then partitioned it.
It should work. But (as far as I know) you won’t be able to have a single SSD that will boot on both Intel and Apple Silicon. But I agree you will have to test it to be sure.
Also note that if you have an Intel Mac, you will need to configure it (using the Startup Security utility) to permit booting from external media.
And (according to Howard Oakley), every time you boot your SSD from a different Mac, you’ll need to go through 2FA authentication as it tries to connect to iCloud and other things tied to your Apple account.
See also:
It doesn’t for me…CCC has been my main backup system of choice for a long time. I do run TM on my Studio.as well…but thee are a dozen tasks on it in CCC for various things and I use CCC and the remote Mac destination as a TM substitute on the laptops because TM to a network destination (a) results in a dmg file and (b) is horrendously unreliable.
Ok, folks, David Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software sent this to me earlier today:
“The replicator works in 15.3.”
I assume he tested SD with the Beta 2 of OS 15.3 that was released earlier today, Also, he included the link Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support. It talks about the DFU port and bootable backups, etc.
So, for me, I am a happy camper, as SD works as expected wih OS 15.3. Apple finally got off its butt and fixed their ASR software. And I am glad we still have developers liek David who refuse to give up!
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Any thoughts on using a cheap-o (Amazon = $70) or pro - as in forensics, law enforcement, … = high-speed and expensive (Amazon = as much as $1K) disk duplicator that does not require you to pull the drive (if you even can)?
Just adding to the information about bootable backups:
I followed the directions in the linked article to download the 15.2 installer from the Mac App Store. I was then able to install 15.2 on my two SuperDuper! ‘clone’ drives and have been able to boot directly from both of them. (Wow, USB pre C spinning iron is really slow!)
Jack,
While that is a way to do it, prior to the release of OS 15.2, SuperDuper! was able to successfully copy/replicate the System Volume (along with the Data Volume), and when done, one could boot from that backup. Well, if you look at the post I made above, partially due to David Nanian’s persistence, Apple fixed their replicator in the most recent beta version of the OS, Beta 2 of OS 15.2. So once OS 15,3 is released (shoulkd be soon), SuperDuper! will work as it should.
A forensinc-analysis duplicator should make sure the files are all accessible, but I wouldn’t make any assumptions about that clone being bootable.
And I’d assume that your Mac can’t be booted and running while its internal storage device is being duplicated.
Seems like overkill if all you need it for is your backup solution.
I backup using Time Machine to a Synology NAS. Time Machine makes several backups every day when activity on my Mac is low. I also make monthly ‘carbon copies’ of my Mac to a separate ‘removeable’ drive that I store in a fireproof box in my basement.
Time Machine
Backblaze
Finder to a USB Drive for media (including photos), Documents
Several USB thumb drives, SSD cards for current projects
iCloud for iOS & iPadOS