CCC question

[musicman691]

In preparation to trying out Yosemite, as good practice, I'll be making a clone using Carbon Copy Cloner of my system. I have a separate drive that already has a clone of my OSX 10.8.5 partition. I'll have to update that I know. I also will have to make a clone of my OSX 10.9.5 partition.

The question becomes: can CCC do a clone to a folder or does it have to be to the root of the drive? If it has to be a root of a drive than I'll have to partition my clone holding drive. If I do that there's no way that I've seen that I can do the partition and not lose what's already on the drive. To alleviate that I'd have to copy off to another drive what's on the clone drive, partition the clone drive, and copy the OSX 10.8.5 clone back to one of the partitions on the newly partitioned drive.

Am I missing something here? Over-thinking this or what? The reason for all this is I don't want to lose my one of my current partitions on the system drive while testing Yosemite. I can partition the system drive no problem (it's 2 terabyte) and not lose any data.

[Drew Mazurek]

http://www.stellarclonedrive.com/#

This one does it to a folder. Might save you some time.

I use Chronosync on a daily basis and really like the way it handles things.

I just set up a 12TB NAS and can schedule all my backups with it.

[Ben Jenssen]

Personally, I use Disk Tools to make .dmg's and never had a problem. Feels safe.

[dr_daw]

I'm pretty sure you can partition unused space, ccc wouldn't boot if you just did it in a folder. Not at my machine, so I cannot confirm, but I'm almost sure you can adjust partition sizes and not loose anything in the main partition. The other option would be to get another drive, and partition it in at least 3 parts, Clean OS not PT's or anything, then a PT's partition, then a Pt's test partition.

I find this the easiest way to revert if their are troubles. Let me know your experience with 11.3 in yosemite, I've been getting more AAE errors than I'm used to. Not convinced yet to move it to my system drive. Likely going to stay on ML.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by dr_daw

I'm pretty sure you can partition unused space, ccc wouldn't boot if you just did it in a folder. Not at my machine, so I cannot confirm, but I'm almost sure you can adjust partition sizes and not loose anything in the main partition. The other option would be to get another drive, and partition it in at least 3 parts, Clean OS not PT's or anything, then a PT's partition, then a Pt's test partition.

I find this the easiest way to revert if their are troubles. Let me know your experience with 11.3 in yosemite, I've been getting more AAE errors than I'm used to. Not convinced yet to move it to my system drive. Likely going to stay on ML.

Can't adjust partition sizes in a non-system drive in OSX and not lose data in the process. The boot drive can be resized into partitions though.

I'm on an iMac and switching system drives ain't that easy.

[Bruce Paine]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Can't adjust partition sizes in a non-system drive in OSX and not lose data in the process. The boot drive can be resized into partitions though.

I'm on an iMac and switching system drives ain't that easy.

I could be wrong, but I think I have changed partitions and sizes on non-system Mac drives with Drive Genius, which I got as an add-on with an OWC drive awhile back.

[Ben Jenssen]

You can manage partitions just fine, boot-drive or not. I do it all the time, with Apples Disk Tools.

If your internal 2TB volume has a lot of free space, just clone the partition that's on it now to the external volume, and then in Disk Tools set its "Layout" to two partitions, drag to set their relative sizes, and excecute. takes a few seconds. Now you have a new partition to experiment on, and you jump between them via system prefs, Startupdisk.

One thing: I've restored startup disks many times thru the years, mostly with Disktools. But I've tried a few times with CCC and Time Machine, and they were not perfect. I can't remember details, but I think it had to do with authorizations, invisible files. Nothing unfixable, but Disk Tools restores a boot drive, and you boot it like nothing had ever happened, every time. I think it's the .dmg format.

The image file (.dmg) is just a file. You can put it anywhere. And you can "mount" it and read and write on it at any time.

IHTH.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Bruce Paine

I could be wrong, but I think I have changed partitions and sizes on non-system Mac drives with Drive Genius, which I got as an add-on with an OWC drive awhile back.

Thanks for that; I was talking about what's available in oSX itself. Will have to look for this and see if it's still available.

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

You can manage partitions just fine, boot-drive or not. I do it all the time, with Apples Disk Tools.

If your internal 2TB volume has a lot of free space, just clone the partition that's on it now to the external volume, and then in Disk Tools set its "Layout" to two partitions, drag to set their relative sizes, and excecute. takes a few seconds. Now you have a new partition to experiment on, and you jump between them via system prefs, Startupdisk.

One thing: I've restored startup disks many times thru the years, mostly with Disktools. But I've tried a few times with CCC and Time Machine, and they were not perfect. I can't remember details, but I think it had to do with authorizations, invisible files. Nothing unfixable, but Disk Tools restores a boot drive, and you boot it like nothing had ever happened, every time. I think it's the .dmg format.

The image file (.dmg) is just a file. You can put it anywhere. And you can "mount" it and read and write on it at any time.

IHTH.

Disk Tools - is that what's also known as OSX Disk Utility? I never said you couldn't manage partitions, just that on non-system drives there's no way that I can see to do that and not lose data that's already on the drive. As a matter of fact OSX Disk Utility warns me of that. It's only system drives where you can manage partitions without losing data. The procedure you write is what works for system drives, not non-system drives.

[suicune]

Just to answer your original question as I don't think anyone has - yes CCC can clone to a folder instead of the root. Just select 'choose a folder' under the destination pull down menu. But in the case of OS/system disks it no longer claims in the information that the resulting clone will be bootable if you do this. I don't know if that means that it's actually missing any necessary boot files or whether it's just stating the obvious that you can't boot from a folder!

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by suicune

Just to answer your original question as I don't think anyone has - yes CCC can clone to a folder instead of the root. Just select 'choose a folder' under the destination pull down menu. But in the case of OS/system disks it no longer claims in the information that the resulting clone will be bootable if you do this. I don't know if that means that it's actually missing any necessary boot files or whether it's just stating the obvious that you can't boot from a folder!

Thanks for the info - much appreciated.