Carbon Copy Cloner

Category
Utilities

Description of App

Carbon Copy Cloner backups are better than ordinary backups. Suppose the unthinkable happens while you're under deadline to finish a project: your Mac is unresponsive and all you hear is an ominous, repetitive clicking noise coming from its hard drive. With ordinary backups, you'd spend your day rushing out to a store to buy a new hard drive and then sit in front of your computer reinstalling the operating system and restoring data.

With Carbon Copy Cloner, your data and the operating system's data are all preserved on a bootable volume, ready for production at a moment's notice. When disaster strikes, simply boot from your backup and get back to using your Mac. At your convenience, replace the failed hard drive and then let CCC restore the OS, your data and your settings directly from the backup in one easy step.

Version

4.1.3

Free or Paid

Paid

Version Of macOS App Was Tested On

10.9.5

Accessibility Comments

The only accessibility issue I've noticed is the following:

If you select to backup selected files and folders there is a table where you can unselect items. When you unselect an item focus jumps to the top of the tabel.

The developer is aware of that, and he will try to fix this as soon as time permits. I believe that he has shown the blind community that he cares about accessibility, and I haven't seen any better application that does backup on OS X.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.
Developer's Twitter Username
@bombichsoftware

Developer Website

http://www.bombich.com/index.html

Link to App on MacUpdate.com

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner

Options

Comments

By KE7ZUM on Saturday, October 25, 2014 - 20:27

Hello. what trouble are yu guys having with the software? the thread does not point out any case uses. They have blind voice over usere and tey did test CCC version 4 so please be as specific as possible so I may pass this along.

Take care.

By Jeff Bishop on Saturday, October 25, 2014 - 20:27

Has anyone determined a way of selecting the source and destination volumes with CCC Version 4?

By Thomas Byskov … on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 20:27

Hi Jeff!
To select the source and destination drive you have to press vo-spacebar on either button. WHen you see the list of drives you have to find the name of the drive e.g.: Macintosh HD. Now press vo-command-F5. to route the mouse to the chosen drive. Now you have so simulate a muse click by pressing: VO-shift-space.
That selects the chosen drive.

By Thomas Byskov … on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 20:27

Hi Marrie!
The interface has changed a lot since version 3. That means that some items aren’t placed in a logical order for Voiceover users.
The way of selecting the source and destination drives is possible, but you have to simulate a click with Voiceover in order for it to work.
The only seriously accessibility issue I’ve found is when excluding items from a drive.
There is (as in version 3) a table with every folder and file from the source-drive. That is possible to navigate. When unchecking an item the focus of Voiceover is moved to the top of the list. Regardless if cursor tracking is turned on or off.
I’ve told Bombichsoftware about all of the above and they say, that they will try to fix it.
Still I would recommend Carbon copy cloner any time. It just take some practice before you’ll like the new interface.

By Soupy on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 20:27

Thomas, that was really helpful, as I’m just getting to grips with CCC and you got me past one of my sticking points.

By jrjolley (not verified) on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 20:27

I've been using SupderDuper for years and did once try CCC when it was free. Is it worth changing strategy now, been backing up daily via SuperDuper without issues

By Thomas Byskov … on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 20:27

Hi James!

I have never tried Superduper myself, so this is what I've found via google and other forums out there:
Carbon COpy Cloner (CCC) makes a full backup of your volume inclusive the recovery. That's not the case for Superduper. It only backups the data on your drive.
I've used CCC since 2012, and I will say that it is a great program, and it does its joj great.
At some point I made some mistakes from terminal, that crashed my internal harddrive. I was able to fix this by booting from an external harddrive and then restore my old harddrive via CCC from my NAS-server. All this was very simple and not technical at all I would say.
Another thing: I have never ever got so great support from any company like Bombichsoftware. THey know their software and they are always willing to help. They do care about accessibility and issues the users are facing.
That might be the same for superduper, but I haven't tested it out.
Would any of you want to do a podcast on CCC or superduper? I would especialy look forward to one of Superduper, since I've thought of checking it out many times, but haven't found the time to do it.
Edit: One thing I forgot was that I really love the documentation on the website of CCC. It is wellstructured and it is clear and speaks straight to the user. I don't know much about harddrives and all that good technical stuff, but the documentation explains things on a very basic level so everyone (almost) will get it right. :-)

You're indeed correct that SD doesn't copy the recovery partition but I will probably stick with it as I have had the same schedule set up on it for years now. Thanks for the details though.

By daytona-mike on Thursday, December 25, 2014 - 20:27

Can I use Carbon Copy to cclone a copy of my windows 7 on my boot camp section? & because it is so large will it let me put it on multiple cd,s? Will I be able to paste it all back after I make the Bootcamp section larger & expect windows 7, openbook & other programs to run without installing them from the original soft ware disk?
Any help appreciated!