And, if you haven’t already seen, this extensive earlier discussion…
FWIW: ShirtPocket has updated SuperDuper! and now says “SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless”
But the CCC KB article cited just above points out that this was a bug in macOS 15.2, and it was fixed in 15.3. So the claim cited by @Ladd should also be correct, as long as you’re not running macOS 15.2.
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I suspect the quoted text is quite old, the website’s still using aqua style buttons and looks ancient.
Regardless, I’m happy to look at this if true, but I think the bootable backups these days can’t actually be used to boot from — I believe they need to be restored to a machine. Also, a truly bootable backup should be bootable from any machine, even if the internal drive has failed. I’m happy to be corrected if SuperDuper can do all this.
Earlier today I booted from my external USB3 SSD drive created with SuperDuper! earlier this year. The version of Sequoia was not current but corresponded to what I had when I created the backup. But it does boot.
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The macOS 15.2 bug has been fixed preventing the creation of bootable backups by SuperDuoer! (et. al.) has indeed been fixed. From what I see, that does not change Mike Bombich’s (and others) advice about bootable backups created in that manner (by SD and CCC). They’re still unsupported by Apple for reasons noted in Mike’s conversations with Apple in the blog. They could break again at any time.
There are other ways to accomplish a bootable “backup” from a second hard drive should you really need it. But unlike Intel Macs, a bootable backup won’t get you up and running on Apple Silicon Macs should your internal SSD totally fail.
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According to Mike Bombich of CCC…who used to work for Apple in the software driver section IIRC…the way that CCC and SD used to use for true bootable clones has been deprecated. SD and CCC provide a sort of bootable clone process but Mike admits it is an unsupported kludge while Dave ignores that part. I own both apps…and while SD is fine for a full volume clone…it is far less capable than CCC for doing folder clones and other assorted backup tasks. Dave and I have had some email about the less than satisfactory interface for doing something other than a full volume clone and he stated that he wasn’t interested in adding those features. I rely on CCC for a lot of things that SD simply can’t do and will never do per Dave.
Personally…I gave up on bootable clones when App,e Silicon came out and just backup the data volume…and AFAIK if the internal drive is toast the thing won’t ever boot anyway.
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They can be booted, but it’s not something that should be considered reliable.
As Mike Bombich wrote:
- It doesn’t always work
- Some USB drives are not bootable
- Kernel extensions and kernel-space device drivers don’t work on Apple Silicon when booted from external storage.
Also, you can not restore your internal SSD by booting the backup and cloning it back to internal storage, the way you could on Intel and PPC Macs. The only way to restore the internal SSD is to reinstall MacOS and then restore the Data volume afterward (e.g. using Migration Assistant).
This is flat-out impossible with Apple Silicon. Unlike older Intel and PowerPC Macs, the Boot ROM code (needed at the very start of the boot sequence) is not in ROM or a standalone flash storage device, but resides in a special partition on the internal SSD.
If the internal SSD fails (meaning it can not be restored using another Mac and Configurator), then that Mac will not be able to boot any operating system from any media.
Fortunately, this kind of failure is rare. Other kinds of failures (e.g. a partition getting corrupted or erased) are recoverable. You still need that special partition on the internal SSD to boot anything, but if it somehow gets erased and the SSD is physically still good, you can restore it using Configurator and afterward boot from your external media.
More than deprecated. Since Apple switched to using an SSV (signed system volume) for booting (in macOS 11), it has been impossible to make a bootable backup by just copying all the files on the System volume. You can copy all the files, but the result won’t be bootable - the system will only boot from an encrypted (sealed) snapshot of the volume, which can only be created by certain Apple tools that include Apple’s private encryption key. Third-party software can’t do it.
The “unsupported kludge” is using the Apple Software Restore tool, which is shipped as a part of macOS. This tool is used by Apple for imaging newly-manufactured Macs in the factory, and it can be used to clone a bootable volume, but that usage is not officially supported by Apple, and it occasionally breaks.
Depends on what you mean by “is toast”.
If one of the APFS containers or the volumes within gets corrupted, then you can absolutely recover from a bootable backup. If the ISC (iBoot System Container - see also Boot volume layout and structure in macOS Sequoia – The Eclectic Light Company) is intact, you can boot an external volume. If the ISC is trashed, but the SSD is physically working, you can restore it via Configurator and then boot an external volume.
But if the internal SSD is so far gone that you can’t restore the ISC, then yes, nothing will boot until the SSD is replaced. Depending on what model Mac you have, this may require swapping the motherboard or performing micro-soldering to replace the flash chips.
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What about Carbonite —the App that digitally backs up your Mac? How would you restore your computer if the hard drive/SSD fails? (It just dawned on me reading all of this topic that I would need to know that!)
Per Adam, I’ve been using Backblaze recently. I’ve been using Time Machine for a few years.
To satisfy my curiosity whether this still works on Sequoia 15.7.2 (it does), I did a full do-over of my SuperDuper! clone. I had SD erase the SSD and then copy both the System and Data partitions. I was able to boot using that drive. Here is a snippet from the log:
| 01:13:14 PM | Info | PHASE: 2. Copy Files
| 01:13:14 PM | Info | ...ACTION: Copying files from B8 to B8-Backup
| 01:13:15 PM | Info | ......COMMAND => Replicating B8 to B8-Backup
| 01:13:15 PM | Info | Initializing
| 01:13:15 PM | Info | done
| 01:13:16 PM | Info | done
| 01:13:16 PM | Info | The following volumes will all be erased:
| 01:13:16 PM | Info | /dev/disk8s5 (/Volumes/B8-Backup - Data)
| 01:13:16 PM | Info | /dev/disk8s1 (/Volumes/B8-Backup)
| 01:13:23 PM | Info | Replicating System Volume
| 01:13:42 PM | Info | Completed System Volume replication. Copied 2.64 TB
| 01:14:02 PM | Info | Replicating Data Volume
| 05:32:52 PM | Info | Completed Data Volume replication. Copied 2.64 TB
| 05:32:52 PM | Info | Finalizing
| 05:33:05 PM | Info | Restored target device is /dev/disk8s1.
| 05:33:06 PM | Info | done
and here is an email from Dave Nanian at Shirt Pocket answering a question I had concerning large numbers of files in a folder:
Erase, then copy in Big Sur and later uses Apple’s replicator. That works below the OS level, at the block level, and isn’t affected by the number of files. It is, however, quite reticent about giving status, which is why things aren’t updated often.
I have been using SuperDuper for years and will continue to do so. Having a bootable backup means I can test things on the clone.
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In the past I ran Time Machine to a local NAS & made drive images with SuperDuper! I was SuperDuper user for 18 years without complaint, and was sad to find out that there was not an upgrade path for SuperDuper! Intel users to Apple Silicon. This did not really matter since I did not have a big enough external ThunderBolt drive, so I switched to Just Time Machine back in late November 2024.
After reading this thread, I bought a license for Chronosync 12 & setup an older Envoy Express TB3 Enclosure with Samsung 990 Pro. Creating my first backup using Chronosync 12 took about 5 minutes, with only choosing my home directory which is about 1.7TB - Running my first backup took about 31 minites… ( with 2 minor errors - which I added to the exclude list )
I’ll create another Chronosync 12 backup on my other Envoy Express TB3 Enclosure, for just my personal documents & work folders-- which should be around 120GB & run this weekly
Between these three backups, If I have a full system failure, I am hoping this three device plan catches any of the files that missed by the other…
This thread was a big help to get this done, Thank you!
Carbonite is a cloud backup service, like Backblaze or Arq. Most people use cloud backup as a secondary backup, intended as a means to recover your most important files in the event that you can’t get to your primary backup (natural disaster, etc.). If you want to have the ability to fully restore a failed internal SSD, you should be running Time Machine (or a third-party equivalent, if you wish) as your primary backup.
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A couple of data points: I have used both Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and ChronoSync (CS) for folder backups. I also useTime Machine.
I use a reference manager, Bookends (excellent app, excellent support), which stores the bibliographic data and PDFs associated with the references in iCloud; this way it is accessible from macOS devices, iPhone, and iPad. This works seamlessly.
I have been doing CCC backups of the iCloud Bookends folder. I recently considered switching to CS for all my backups, and so I tried to create the Bookends backup. (I’ll leave out some of the details of how CS does a backup of iCloud folders). A problem arose. After some configuration for an iCloud backup, CS puts up a dialog to select the source folder. The Bookends folder does not appear in that dialog. I contacted CS tech support. They have been working with me quite a bit (a testament to their tech support), but for two weeks we have not been able to solve this problem. Finally, their engineers provided some terminal commands that produced a log that would enable them, we hoped, to resolve the problem. They reported back today that Bookends’ info.plist does not contain an entry that the engineers say would resolve the problem (“without resorting to kludgery”).
So this seems to be the end of the story. CCC does allow me to see the Bookends folder and select it as a source for backup (is it using a kludge?). I can see the folder in iCloud using the Finder, of course. I even tried a trial of another backup app, and although it wouldn’t let me perform the backup in trial mode (too many files, about 1500 and it limits the trial to 40), it did let me select the Bookends folder as a source (again, is this app also using a kludge?).
Needless to say, my daily backup of this folder in CCC continues to work.
ChronoSync is a really capable backup solution. I don’t know why it isn’t able to see and backup this one iCloud folder.
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Thanks for the explanation, Jeff. I do run Time Machine and back up with Super Duper, too. Just wanted to know what to do in case of failed hard drive.
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This is a scenario I deal with on occasion, too; and I’ve been trying to figure out how I’ll implement it when I make the jump to an Apple Silicon Mac.
Having read the insightful and informative postings on this (and other) TidBITS threads, I think my solution for testing a different macOS version, or for testing on a separate clone, on an Apple Silicon Mac is to keep a sizable chunk of storage free on my internal drive. Unless I’m mistaken, there are no restrictions on booting from a separate partition on the internal drive, that contains a bootable macOS system.
Of course, this means having a sizable internal SSD drive. For me, that’s not a problem:
- I tend to buy a fairly loaded Mac when I get one, since I keep it for years. I’ve maxed out the SSD at 2TB in the past; and if the next Mac I get is a Mac Mini Pro or Mac Studio, I can get something even larger.
- For large amounts of data or space-consuming projects, I store them on non-bootable external SSD drives (e.g., my iTunes music collection). This keeps my internal bootable drive relatively compact and tidy, and leaves me plenty of room to create other partitions on it for separate, bootable experiments.
Does anyone see issues with using this approach with an Apple Silicon Mac?
A very timely new article by Howard Oakley just dropped: Create a bootable external disk for Apple silicon Macs in Tahoe – The Eclectic Light Company
I wouldn’t rule out an external bootable disk - it frees you from having to carve up your internal system disk and dedicating its space to a second installation.
If testing is your goal, a macOS virtual machine (running under UTM or other solution based on Apple’s Virtualization Framework) might be an alternative.
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Got it. In that case, once the failed drive is replaced, you could then just use Migration Assistant and indicate your Time Machine drive as the source.
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This turned me off of SuperDuper many years ago, the old-school feel and (now) 20-year-old awards on the website make it look like the software is not “modern”. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire – that reminded me that a SuperDuper update was posted last month to address some pretty serious security problems that had apparently been around for 22 years. Today I discovered that a security researcher posted a detailed breakdown of the issues: graypixel2121 (Martin Gray) · GitHub
It’s an interesting read. Bolsters my decision to steer clear of the app too.
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Here is a direct link to the Martin Gray analysis:
and the top-level summary:
Rather than implementing an open source software update solution that has been tested by hundreds of developers and security professionals, the SuperDuper developers created their own software update mechanism built atop insecure shell scripts that run with root privileges and have full disk access. By failing to authenticate the software that is getting installed during the update, SuperDuper is duped into installing an attacker’s software. The developer’s fix addresses only the authentication aspect of this vulnerability, it does not address the inherent vulnerabilities that result from using shell scripts to facilitate the update process.
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