- #Carbon copy cloner install#
- #Carbon copy cloner update#
- #Carbon copy cloner upgrade#
- #Carbon copy cloner software#
#Carbon copy cloner update#
(The long-running SuperDuper from Shirt Pocket is close to releasing a Big Sur-compatible update that’s free to existing registered users.)
#Carbon copy cloner software#
ChronoSync: The synchronization and cloning software ChronoSync from Econ Technologies is adept at keeping files and folders in sync across many targets-folders, volumes, SFTP servers, cloud servers, etc.-but it can also create clones and archives of the Data volume.(Like Time Machine, it uses an APFS feature for snapshots, allowing a quick rollback, too.)
#Carbon copy cloner upgrade#
Carbon Copy Cloner: Carbon Copy Cloner has deprecated full drive clones in Big Sur of the sort described above, and its default “standard” mode creates a full clone of the Data volume, which it can upgrade incrementally.Disk Utility: Disk Utility allows selection of the Data volume so it can be copied to a disk image or backed up as a separate volume on a drive.Time Machine: Apple naturally continues to update Time Machine with each release of macOS, and after the first full backup of your Mac to Time Machine, you have a complete copy of your Data volume.However, it’s my primary startup drive, not a backup.) I switched my iMac from its slow internal Fusion drive to an external SSD months ago and then upgraded it to Big Sur and performed subsequent macOS updates without a problem. (You can still opt to use an external drive as your main startup volume in Big Sur, just as with previous macOS releases. Updates to the Data volume on your internal drive when copied to the external could actually cause changes that prevent that external drive from starting up your Mac successfully.You either have to erase the drive and copy everything again, or boot with the external startup volume and perform a software update within an active Big Sur session.
You can’t apply changes to the system volume.However, the folks at Bombich include a long list of provisos about what might go wrong during copying.Įven after making a valid bootable system copy, keeping it up to date is problematic: Apple offers a bypass that Carbon Copy Cloner has managed to take advantage of, which is a low-level copying tool called asr that can in some (but not all) circumstances copy Big Sur’s system volume from an internal to an external drive and keep it in bootable shape. Any change to even a single bit in the volume causes validation to fail (breaking the “seal”). Big Sur picked up on the system/Data volume division of Catalina, but added another layer: when installed or upgraded, macOS’s system volume has a cryptographic wrapper around it that prevents the slighest modification without detection.Įssentially, a Big Sur system volume has to be installed on a freshly erased disk, because the process of making the seal is unique to each volume. (The Big Sur volume isn’t even mounted directly, but as a read-only APFS snapshot, making it even harder for an attacker to find a way in.)īig Sur took that one step further in a way that affects your ability to continue to make backups of the style you might be accustomed to, and which requires a rethink for the present and future. The system volume is read-only and locked against modification during an active macOS session the Data volume can be read and written, and apps on its may be launched. With the concept of a volume group in APFS, Catalina organized all system files and core apps into one volume and all user-owned and user-modifiable data, third-party apps, and some Apple apps into another. This culminated in macOS 10.15 Catalina in splitting macOS into two pieces, which appear seamlessly as a single unit in the Finder, but which severed a long-time intermingling of files.