CCC with Big Sur

[Fritz]

those of you with CCC on Big Sur (and Monty), have you opted for the bootable b.u. or just the data back-up?

I was asking Mr Bombich yesterday. He said ..

"produce a bootable result. Any of these procedures will work:

A: Use CCC to establish a "Data Only" backup, then install macOS onto the backup volume
B: Install macOS onto an empty volume, then use Migration Assistant to migrate data to the new OS

but this does not work:

C: Install macOS onto an empty volume, then use CCC to back up your production startup disk onto that clean install of macOS"

[sekker]

My CCC data backups are all spinny drives, so I'm only going with Data Only for Big Sur machines.

I do have a singular TB external SSD boot drive, but it's running Mojave...

[Sarcany]

I have successfully made bootable Big Sur backups from Intel Macs onto various types of media with CCC. Piece of cake.

However, just today I used CCC 6 to back up to an external SSD with the "best effort" option on a Big Sur M1 Mac and failed to make it bootable.

After cloning, it took a bunch of extra steps to designate the SSD as a legit boot drive and ultimately it failed to boot because it couldn't authenticate the OS on the external with Apple's servers during the intermediate step where it ran off of the Recovery volume.

The error occurred because I didn't have an Ethernet connection handy and the Recovery system wouldn't let me join a WiFi network. I'm not sure when I'll have the opportunity to try this again on a ARM Mac, but I got close enough that I think the drive would have been bootable but for that network issue.

[Fritz]

for the intels, did you use the method that bombich describes or .... ?

[anonymouse1]

For a 2015 MBA, and using an NVME SSD in an external USB enclosure, I tried using CCC and couldn't get a bootable drive. I tried to install Big Sur directly, and transfer the data over with CCC and SuperDuper, neither worked.

Finally I took the existing working install out of the MBA, installed the NVME SSD in the Mac, put the SSD that had been in the MBA into the enclosure, booted from the external SSD, and then used SuperDuper in the mode "Erase, then install" in SuperDuper.

Total PITA.

[Sarcany]

Fritz wrote:
for the intels, did you use the method that bombich describes or .... ?

I've done it with CCC v5 and v6 using the ASR method which isn't mentioned in the OP. I usually partition a drive to provide a blank HFS+ volume then set CCC to cloning. It will take that volume and convert it to APFS and create a volume-group with separate System and Data vols.

I wonder whether the reason that it wasn't mentioned is that Bombich was addressing your specific question rather than providing general guidance.

...The latest CCC v6 has the "Legacy bootable backup assistant." It's only been available for a brief time, but it's worked for me across multiple backups -- until I tried it on a M1.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-maco...re-restore

Here's the caveat: When making scheduled "bootable" backups, the System volume doesn't get updated after the initial ASR backup. Only the Data volume gets updated on the schedule. And this will make the two fall out of sync. So, I don't update my bootable Big Sur backups at all. I use those drives as bootable utility drives. My scheduled Big Sur backups from my work-desktop and work-laptop are only backing up the Data vol.

[Fritz]

Sarcany wrote:

I wonder whether the reason that it wasn't mentioned is that Bombich was addressing your specific question rather than providing general guidance.

could be ..

Here's the caveat: When making scheduled "bootable" backups, the System volume doesn't get updated after the initial ASR backup. Only the Data volume gets updated on the schedule. And this will make the two fall out of sync. So, I don't update my bootable Big Sur backups at all. I use those drives as bootable utility drives. My scheduled Big Sur backups from my work-desktop and work-laptop are only backing up the Data vol.

I guess since I have other Macs, jic, I'll stick to data only for the time being. And perhaps make a bootable b.u. on a thumb, if only not to wait for a spinner.