Need to Clone Your Mac HDD? Try Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup utility with a difference. While most backup applications make copies of selected files, Carbon Copy Cloner makes an exact duplicate of a disk. For many Mac users, Carbon Copy Cloner has prevented complete disaster, helping them rescue an entire hard drive before it failed. Because Carbon Copy Cloner makes an exact duplicate, the copy is bootable just like the original, making it possible to create a swap-out drive for recovery.

Did you know that Time Machine’s backups are not always accessible if you switch to a new Mac? That makes Carbon Copy Cloner vital tool if you want to preserve the contents of your Mac’s hard drive after an upgrade.

Key benefits include:

• Incremental backups after the initial backup, saving you time and disk space.
• Backups across networks, to external drives or to a disk image on your computer (with or without encryption).
• Scheduling of backup operations, and backups triggered by an event.
• Easy to use controls to make backups simple for the novice.
• The ability to back up a drive with bad sectors and rescue the data that’s remaining.
• Carbon Copy Cloner is free for 30 days. After that, you’ll need to purchase a licence to continue using it on your Mac.

The Following updates have been undertaken in this latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner:

• CCC now makes a special accommodation for specifying a DiskWarrior Preview volume as the source to a backup task.
• CCC now handles cases where the user or an external utility (e.g. “CleanMyMac”) deletes the folder where CCC stores task configuration files while CCC is running. Previously this caused CCC to report that it was unable to save tasks (which would be resolved after restarting), now CCC will recreate the folder immediately, then save the task.
• Fixed an issue that occured when multiple tasks started simultaneously and attempted to retrieve an item from CCC’s private keychain. Previously, only one of the tasks would succeed, the others would report that they were unable to retrieve the keychain item, or that they were unable to mount the destination volume (for example).
• Fixed a UI anomaly that would occur in the sidebar when resizing the window.
• Fixed an issue in which the main window’s user interface elements would not load properly on some Mountain Lion systems.
• Fixed an issue in which custom filters associated with a task that had a remote Macintosh specified as the source would be lost after the initial import (e.g. from a CCC 3.5 task). Also fixed an issue in which this same task would constantly be marked “dirty” when the task was selected, despite making no changes to it.
• Made a minor adjustment to how a Recovery HD volume is created that should avoid a bug in Disk Utility when attempting to make future partition changes to that disk.
• CCC will now unlock the root destination folder if it is locked (rather than report an error that the destination cannot be written to).
• Addressed a compatibility issue with some OS X FUSE volumes (e.g. BoxCryptor).
• Fixed an issue in which CCC would report that a source Xsan volume was not available after that volume had been unmounted and remounted.
• Implemented a workaround to an OS X Yosemite bug in which the height of a Save or Open panel (e.g. the panel presented when you choose “Choose a Folder” or “Choose a disk image” or “New disk image”) grows by 22 pixels every time it is opened. This growth, when unchecked, would eventually cause the panel to grow past the bottom of the screen, making some buttons inaccessible.
• Addressed an edge case in which the Recovery HD OS version was not collected for some Recovery HD volumes when opening CCC.
• If a task is missed because the source or destination is missing, and the task is configured to run when the missing volume reappears, the state information that indicates that a run time was missed due to a missing volume is now stored persistently. Previously this information was lost when CCC’s helper tool was reloaded, e.g. after restarting, or after updating CCC, which would result in a task getting skipped.
• If a laptop’s AC power is restored while the system is sleeping, this power state change is now detected more reliably on wake. Previously, CCC relied on the power state change notification to run tasks that were waiting for AC power to be restored. If that state change occurred during sleep, CCC would have missed the notification and errantly reported that a task was “waiting for AC power to be restored”, even though AC power was available.

You can download Carbon Copy Cloner from Filehippo.com, today.

[Image via bombich]