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.
This article either needs to be updated or removed. Bootable backups are back again, at least with using SuperDuper! (SD). There was an issue with Apple’s ASR software when OS 15.2 was released. I am a longtime SD user, and until OS 15.2, had no issues creating bootable backups with SD. But after it arrived, initially it was fine, but then started being “hit or miss”. I have been in contact with David Nanian (creator of SD) about this, and he said Apple was working on a fix. Sure enough, it was fixed with the 3rd beta release of OS 15.3, and subsequently with the release of OS 15.3. the other day. I successfully downloaded and installed OS 15.3 on both of my Macs (M1 Mac Mini, and M3 Mac Book Air), then ran SD to create bootable backups. It worked as expected, ie, I was able to boot each machine from its respective SD backup.
So, again, bootable backups are back, at least with SD. And I am so glad that we have some developers live David who refuse to give up. I suspect he “complained” loudly to Apple, and they finally got off their butts and fixed it!
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In my article about macOS 15.3, I wrote:
Since then, I have confirmed that this is indeed a bug in Apple Software Restore that predates macOS 15.2. The problem is that asr sometimes fails to recreate a cache. Installing macOS over the backup “fixes” the cache. The problem is not universal, but the practical upshot is that if you consider a bootable backup essential to your strategy, it’s essential to test that it can actually boot your Mac.
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It’s been mentioned a lot in this thread, always very similar wording, but as someone who has never created a bootable backup on an external drive, can someone please explain what is meant by “install MacOS over the backup”? I’ve also seen it like this… “copy only your data volume to the external drive and then install the OS over top of that”.
Literally that.
Make a (normal) backup of the Data volume. Then run a macOS installer application and tell it to use your backup as the destination of the installation.
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Thanks for simplifying it for me. I’m an over-thinker and I was definitely doing it here.
It can also mean to repair an unbootable bootable backup by reinstalling macOS on it. For example
- Make a full clone to an external drive.
- Try to boot, but it fails because asr forgot to update the dyld cache.
- Use MacOS Recovery or other means to reinstall macOS on the problem drive.
- Problem fixed!
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I wouldn’t condemn Migration Assistant out of hand because it had problems migrating from a 16 yr old Mac with a different processor. I have used MA many times in the last few years without problem.
I don’t know if Apple has any restrictions on the use of MA but if so I would be surprised if supports such a leap.
I think most people would advise against using MA in such a situation.
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Regarding what Adam stated above about Bootable backups, first of all, until OS 15.2 was released, SuperDuper! (SD) has ALWAYS been able to create bootable backups (and yes, I did test them). David Nanian has needed to “program around” ASR, but he was able to do it (fortunately still have some Developers like David who refuse to give up).
Secondly, the other products Adam mentioned (Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and ChronoSync) have not been able to create bootable backups for more than a year. I guess the developers of them decided to “give up”.
Third, the ASR issue was fixed in the 3rd beta of OS 15.3 (I found that our from David at that time), and it was released recently. I already posted about my success with SuperDuper! and OS 15.3., And I also tested each of my Macs by booting each of them up from the just completed SuperDuper! backups, and as expected, they worked.
No one who uses either CCC or ChronoSync has posted about any success with bootable backups and OS 15.3. So it seems SuperDuper! is the only one that does actually create bootable backups.
As for the issue, Adam, with your M1 MacBook Air, I do not have either ChatGPT or Claude installed on either of my Macs. But my M3 MacBook Air works fine with SuperDuper!. And yes, after creating my backups yesterday, I was able to boot each of my Macs from their respective SD backup.
And yes, your statement “The problem is not universal, but the practical upshot is that if you consider a bootable backup essential to your strategy, it’s essential to test that it can actually boot your Mac.” is sound advice. The other thing would be to insure any additional software you use works as expected, and does not cause issues. Note that David did (and always does) just that with SD, but it seems like the developers of ChatGPT and Claude did not. I of course do not know of any other issues, especially with third party software. As I’ve mentioned before, I use third party software exclusively on my Macs, and I am diligent about keeping such software up to date. Never had any issues.
That’s because like the title of this thread, people have moved on!!!
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SuperDuper! seems to be successful for me in creating bootable external backup. The external disk is listed as a possible startup disk, but it fails to boot when selected. The only way I have succeeded in making a bootable external startup is to use the Sequoia installer to install Sequoia on the external disk and then use either SuperDuper! or CCC to clone the Data Volume. This then works, but is not worth the effort. All on M1 MacMini.
Bootable backups:
I have relied on bootable backups to quickly restore my entire system when moving to a new machine, or recovering from a fatal disk crash on an old machine, by booting from the clone and then cloning it to the new or repaired machine. I now have two backups that I have tested that boot the M2 Mini they were cloned from, but…
I think I’ve understood that in the age of Apple Silicon attaching the clone disk to a different machine would render it unbootable because of Apple’s security strategy. I don’t have another machine to experiment on, so my question is could I use either of my cloned drives to boot a new/different machine if the Mini fails?
I have a terminology issue with the discussion: the term ‘bootable backup.’
[Rant begins]
I’ve been taught to understand that you never update a backup except via your backup procedures. If you update the backup by booting from it, you don’t have a backup anymore since the disk no longer accurately represents the original. Furthermore, if you are running from it and the issue that caused you issues before is still present, you’ve now corrupted your ‘backup’.
So, please refer to these bootable disks as ‘bootable clones’. I can see reasons for wanting these:
You may want to run two different images on the same hardware or quickly recover from a failure. In either case, you should initially think of these disks as clones, not backups. Once they are used, they are environments forked from the original.
A true backup is used to recreate your system, either on the original hardware or replacement hardware, not for actually running the system.
[Rant ends]
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