The only time I have ever needed a backup was when my iMac’s display failed. I have a 2nd Mac, a MacBook Pro, but that has only a modest subset of the documents on the iMac. While the iMac was being repaired, I used the BOOTABLE backup (made by SuperDuper! on an external drive) with the laptop to do most of my work, then cloned the now-updated backup back to the repaired iMac.
I am about to leave my Intel chip setup, with an M4 new MacBook Pro, so now I have to learn the best way to backup the new laptop. (The older 27" iMac is my primary Mac and is still Intel and I’m hoping that Apple offers a large screen iMac in the next few years, before I need to replace it.)
Bingo, that’s exactly why I went w/CCC. Plus every time I have asked a question, I get a prompt reply from Mike himself… so part of my motivation was supporting a really good developer who I have “known” for many years.
Before I upgraded it I tried to make sure that the old Safety Net was in use… while it was deprecated, I now understand how I can use the Snapshots I said to create. I can also have CC boot the machine when I am sleeping, do it’s task and shut the machine back down.
As for Migration Ass’t. it’s a load of crap. I tried to use it to bring my stuff from my 2009 cMP to my M4 Mini. Was surprised why it did its thing so quickly. Low and behold it IGNORED everything and I mean everything in my ~/Music, ~/Photos and ~/Videos. All of which eat up a huge amount of the storage I need. Had to move them over manually over the network. Looks like it worked (so far). When I spoke to the fruit, they said I should do it that way. Not a peep WHY something like that happened. Fortunately, my Mini is going to be the last Mac I get… hopefully it lasts until I am off to the great beyond.
BTW, I put a watt meter on my new baby… holy smokes. Just cruising the web, writing ths message takes about 6W. Sometimes I see it get up to 12W. Play FFXIV runs about 30-34W (my cMP in it’s winblowz mode runs 390-420W playing the same game). I DID see it hit about 40W when using Handbrake to convert some videos that don’t seem to play anymore.
The asr bug does affect Synology’s backup app, but I’m pretty sure that any complaints about Time Machine are unrelated. Time Machine doesn’t use asr and isn’t making bootable backups.
Keep in mind that you can’t mix bootable backups between Apple silicon and Intel-based Macs.
It depends on your machine. I had an iMac i3 3.6GHz 21.5" (Early 2019) 256GB SSD. After I upgraded from Sonoma to Sequoia, my computer was unhappy. I can’t tell you all the specific symptoms, but it generally slowed down. I looked into downgrading to Sonoma, but it was too technically challenging for me. So, I got myself a 24-inch, 2024, Apple M4 iMac. I traded in my old machine for a $130 Apple gift card.
I’ve never ever had either a superduper or CCC back up file. But I have Time Machine backups fail on my friends and clients Macs. I will never ever use it.
I assume you mean you haven’t had an SD or CCC backup fail.
That having been said, do you know if these failed Time Machine volumes were using HFS+ or APFS volumes? The fragility of TM on HFS+ is pretty well known and documented, but I haven’t heard of TM on APFS having similar problems.
Either way, I think it just underscores the need for multiple backups with multiple software packages. Nothing is bug-free and even if your personal experience with these two cloning tools is perfect, there’s no guarantee that others won’t have problems or that some future version may have a serious bug.
I know the future is dark! I have redundant back ups and one offsite. I try to instill that with my clients. But do they listen?
Creating external bootable disks
Using an Intel Mac with a T2 chip to create an external bootable disk is straightforward …
Doing the same using an Apple silicon Mac should be simpler, as you don’t change anything in Startup Security Utility, because Apple silicon Macs can always boot securely from external drives. However, since this first became possible about four years ago, the procedure has become notoriously unreliable. Some users have never had failures, while others have never been successful. The reason for this has been obscure until recently, when Apple revealed its cause is the DFU port. [my emphasis]
… Once that bootable disk has been created, personalised and set up, it will then boot and work fine from any port on that Mac, including its DFU port. I’ll be stepping through this procedure in detail in the next day or two, as there are some additional considerations.