Knowledge Base: Carbon Copy Cloner 5
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This documentation is for an older version of CCC. The documentation for the current version (v6) is here. You can find the documentation for the previous version of CCC (v4) here.
What's New
- macOS Big Sur Known Issues
- macOS Catalina Known Issues
- What's new in CCC 5?
- System Requirements for Carbon Copy Cloner
- Upgrading from Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5 to Carbon Copy Cloner 5
- Carbon Copy Cloner 5 Release Notes
- Credits
- Everything you need to know about Carbon Copy Cloner and APFS
- Working with APFS Volume Groups
Purchasing CCC
- Bombich Software Sales Policies and Frequently Asked Questions
- How does the free 30-day trial work?
- Purchasing an Upgrade for Carbon Copy Cloner 5
- If I pay for CCC now, will I have to pay for future updates?
- Do you offer an academic discount?
- Do you offer a volume licensing program?
- Can I give CCC as a gift?
- Why isn't CCC on the Mac App Store?
- Do you offer telephone support?
- en Sales Terms and Conditions
Downloading, Installing and Registering CCC
- How do I download and install Carbon Copy Cloner?
- System Requirements for Carbon Copy Cloner
- Upgrading from CCC 4 to CCC 5
- Upgrading from Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5 to Carbon Copy Cloner 5
- How to Manually Enter a CCC Registration Code
- Trouble Applying Your Registration Information?
- How to Register CCC in One Click
- How do I use one license of CCC on multiple Macs in my household?
- Oops, that license code is invalid...
- I already purchased CCC but can't find my registration code. Can you send it to me?
- Migrating CCC tasks from one system to another
Using CCC
- How to set up your first backup
- How to verify or test a bootable backup
- How to restore from your backup
- How to set up a scheduled backup
- How to modify a scheduled backup
- Monitoring backup tasks with the CCC menubar application
- Configuring Email Notifications
- How to find out when a backup last ran: CCC Task History
- Protecting data that is already on your destination volume: The Carbon Copy Cloner SafetyNet
- The Disk Center
- Cloning Apple's Recovery HD partition
- Simple Mode
- Leveraging Snapshots on APFS Volumes
- Notes for VoiceOver users
- Granting Full Disk Access to CCC and its helper tool
- Cloning macOS System volumes with Apple Software Restore
- Creating and restoring data volume backups
Sample Usage Scenarios
- I want to clone my entire hard drive to a new hard drive or a new machine
- I want to back up my data to a Time Capsule, NAS, or other network volume
- I want to back up multiple Macs or source volumes to the same hard drive
- Can I run a backup while I'm using my computer? If I have open files, will they be backed up?
- Can I back up one computer and use the clone to restore another computer?
- I have a clone created by another application. Will CCC recognize that data, or will it want to recopy everything?
- Can CCC back up my BootCamp (Windows) partition?
- Can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone a Time Machine backup?
- Cloning one external hard drive to another external hard drive
- Restoring an item from a hidden folder
- Folder-to-Folder Backups
- Backing up and restoring Finder's Trash
- Refining the scope of a backup task
Troubleshooting
- macOS Big Sur Known Issues
- macOS Catalina Known Issues
- How do I get help?
- The disk usage on the destination doesn't match the source. Did CCC miss some files?
- Help! My clone won't boot!
- Some applications behave differently or ask for the serial number on the cloned volume. Did CCC miss something?
- Identifying and Troubleshooting Hardware-Related Problems
- Keeping CCC up to date
- Uninstalling CCC
- CCC reported that the destination is full. What can I do to avoid this?
- Antivirus software may interfere with a backup
- What criteria does CCC use to determine if a file should be recopied?
- "CCC found multiple volumes with the same Universally Unique Identifier"
- Finder or App Store finds other versions of applications on the backup volume
- Launchpad ignores settings created while booted from another volume
- "The task was aborted because a subtask did not complete in a reasonable amount of time"
- Troubleshooting slow performance when copying files to or from a network volume
- Where can I find CCC's log file?
- Why can't I eject the destination volume after the backup task has completed?
- Why does Finder prevent me from viewing the home folder on my backup when it's attached to another Mac?
- Some third-party storage drivers may cause hardware misbehavior
- Troubleshooting APFS Replication
- Coping with errors caused by APFS filesystem corruption
Advanced Topics
- Excluding files and folders from a backup task
- Advanced Settings
- Performance Suggestions
- Working with FileVault Encryption
- Some files and folders are automatically excluded from a backup task
- Performing actions Before and After the backup task
- Restoring non-system files
- Backing up to a disk image
- Restoring from a disk image
- I have a full-volume backup in a folder or a disk image, but I don't have a bootable backup. How can I restore everything?
- Using Carbon Copy Cloner to back up to/from another Macintosh on your network
- A caveat for backing up to a remote Macintosh that has no user logged in
- Restoring from a backup on a remote Macintosh
- Task Organization
- I want to defragment my hard drive
- Frequently Asked Questions about encrypting the backup volume
- Frequently asked questions about scheduled tasks
- Frequently asked questions about the Carbon Copy Cloner SafetyNet folder
- Frequently Asked Questions about cloning Apple's "Recovery HD" partition
- Using the ccc Command Line Tool to Start, Stop, and Monitor CCC Backup Tasks
- Backing up databases on OS X Server
- Backing up large files, mounted disk images, and Virtual Machine containers
- Automated maintenance of the CCC SafetyNet folder
- "My disk is already formatted APFS or HFS+, why am I getting this warning?"
- Backing up to/from network volumes and other non-macOS-formatted volumes
- A closer look at how CCC determines the "bootability" of a destination volume
- Cloning Coach Configuration Concerns
- Configuring Scheduled Task Runtime Conditions
- Modifying CCC's Security Configuration
- Creating a separate task to prevent VM container versions from bloating the SafetyNet
- Outgoing network connections made by CCC
- When I boot from my backup, Little Snitch reports that its rules have been replaced by a different version. Why, and how can I avoid this?
- Limitations of online-only placeholder files
- What is CCC's Privileged Helper Tool?
- Downgrading an APFS-formatted Fusion volume from Mojave
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Glossary of Terms
- The disk usage on the destination doesn't match the source. Did CCC miss some files?
- I want to back up multiple Macs or source volumes to the same hard drive
- Some applications behave differently or ask for the serial number on the cloned volume. Did CCC miss something?
- Can I run a backup while I'm using my computer? If I have open files, will they be backed up?
- Can I back up one computer and use the clone to restore another computer?
- Identifying and Troubleshooting Hardware-Related Problems
- I have a clone created by another application. Will CCC recognize that data, or will it want to recopy everything?
- Can CCC back up my BootCamp (Windows) partition?
- CCC reported that the destination is full. What can I do to avoid this?
- Can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone a Time Machine backup?
- Frequently Asked Questions about encrypting the backup volume
- Frequently asked questions about scheduled tasks
- Frequently asked questions about the Carbon Copy Cloner SafetyNet folder
- Frequently Asked Questions about cloning Apple's "Recovery HD" partition
- Can I run backup tasks while my system is on battery power?
- Can I run my backups more frequently than Hourly?
- System problems can lead to a failure to install CCC's helper tool
- The legacy SafetyNet folder is not used when snapshots are enabled on the destination
- Why does CCC say that my Mac is booted from a backup volume?
- Frequently asked questions about CCC and APFS Volume Groups
- Frequently asked questions about CCC and macOS 11