Carbon Copy Cloner - Mirror an OS X drive

May 29, '03 08:46:00AM

Contributed by: robg

Carbon Copy Cloner iconThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]

Although mentioned here a few times previously (including this hint from a year ago), Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) has never been listed as a Pick of the Week. This is a definite oversight on my part, as it's an amazing little program.

I'll let the original article and comments do most of the explaining, but basically CCC allows you to clone one OS X hard drive to another, maintaining permissions and ownership, and copying all the hidden files. Since the original hint on CCC was published in April 2002, the code has gotten even better, and new features have been added that allow you to use CCC as a backup system. If you run a lab, you can also use CCC to create a NetBoot image for installation on all machines, using a fully customized OS X installation.

I've used CCC a few times when I just wanted to do some experimenting on my "good" boot drive. I run CCC and mirror it to another volume, then modify the OS X install on that volume and reboot from it. It's really an amazing little program and well worth checking out if you've never given it a look.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030529054605961