What if one thing goes fallacious and also you want rapid entry on-site to a full backup of your Mac’s startup quantity or an exterior drive, and it’s worthwhile to return to work as quickly as potential? The introduction of Apple silicon made it tough to create a drive you may swap in and begin up from, however that shouldn’t cease you from making a backup that may get you again in enterprise. (There are workarounds, nevertheless it requires ongoing effort.)
The best choice to have a virtually hot-swappable copy of your most essential regionally saved knowledge is a clone. A clone is an actual copy of the present state of a quantity–a snapshot, actually. Time Machine presents a type of this functionality, nevertheless it additionally archives older recordsdata. You may configure cloning software program simply to maintain an up-to-date copy of the drive you wish to mirror and nothing extra.
I’ve relied on Carbon Copy Cloner or CCC ($49.99) for years. It helps cloning and quite a few associated options, like archiving. An alternate is SuperDuper! ($27.95), which is extra tightly targeted on quantity cloning. With apps, you decide a supply (sometimes a quantity) and a vacation spot, set a schedule, and configure fiddly choices, like verifying recordsdata after copying in CCC.
Cloning allows you to use a drive that’s no greater than the drive you’re copying from for cloning, not like Time Machine and archiving modes in different backup software program, which want house to retailer a number of variations of recordsdata over time. (Time Machine at all times archives older recordsdata till a backup quantity begins to fill, after which it purges the oldest variations of archived recordsdata first.)
I’ve discovered that cloning software program has a bonus in reliability over Time Machine, which shops knowledge in date-stamped snapshots. In case your startup quantity dies and your Mac continues to be working, you need to use an exterior drive, set up macOS on it, and use Migration Assistant throughout setup to import recordsdata. Nevertheless, I’ve had issues on a number of events the place Migration Assistant gained’t acknowledge what appears to be an up-to-date Time Machine copy of my startup quantity. I’ve turned to a cloned backup of that quantity, which works compatibly with Migration Assistant and doesn’t appear to fail in the identical circumstances. I’ve been grateful that I had this further copy.
A Macworld reader requested specifically about organising a shortly accessible exterior drive in case the drive they stored their Images library on failed. Might they swap instantly to a clone that’s been stored updated on the opposite drive? Sure, and it’s an important goal for a clone.
In that situation, you may give up Images (if it hadn’t already instructed you of an issue and give up), eject the failing drive, launch Images whereas holding down Possibility, and choose the Images Library file on the cloned drive. Relying on how incessantly you’ve the clone operation set, you would possibly lose little or no work. With iCloud Images enabled, you’d additionally must set the cloned library as your System Library in > Images > Settings > Normal by clicking Use as System Photograph Library.
It’s also possible to drill down with clones, copying simply a part of a quantity as an alternative of the entire thing. I had a Images library meltdown in 2021 that took me hours to recuperate from after which days to get again to regular. One thing in my Images Library package deal corrupted so badly that even restoring from a Time Machine backup failed. Ultimately, I needed to rebuild from scratch and let Images sync with iCloud to retrieve all my photographs and movies. Vowing to not let that occur once more, I setup a nightly clone of my regionally saved Images Library package deal to a high-capacity exterior laborious drive. Whereas the laborious drive is gradual, the clone replace occurs in a single day, so it doesn’t overlap with my daytime work.
Carbon Copy Cloner provides me an additional set of suspenders on my Images Library backup by making an actual copy, updating simply any modified recordsdata for effectivity, each night time.
Carbon Copy Cloner provides me an additional set of suspenders on my Images Library backup by making an actual copy, updating simply any modified recordsdata for effectivity, each night time.
Foundry
Carbon Copy Cloner provides me an additional set of suspenders on my Images Library backup by making an actual copy, updating simply any modified recordsdata for effectivity, each night time.
Foundry
Foundry
As a result of a simple clone doesn’t allow you to go backward, I strongly advise you to have at the very least a pair different types of backups. Time Machine is the simplest for a Mac proprietor. Add to that Backblaze or one other encrypted, on-line backup service. Or, should you’re preserving all of your paperwork and pictures in a syncing service–iCloud Images/iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive/Google Images, and so forth.–you may lean on that as your second backup.
This Mac 911 article is in response to a query submitted by Macworld reader Michael.
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