Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) 7, released in May 2024, introduces several enhancements to streamline and improve the backup process for macOS users. Priced at £41 + Vat for a Personal and Household license, with upgrade discounts up to 50%, CCC 7 offers a comprehensive 30-day trial without requiring account creation or payment details.
The 30 day trial is a nice feature giving you access to the product allowing you a full testing software package. This trial allows you the option to fully test the product without having to purchase the software. Also if you have a previous version you get a nice discount if you use that code when purchased the upgrade option.
Key Features:
- Backup Volume Setup Assistant: Simplifies the initial setup by guiding users through formatting new backup disks with the optimal filesystem. This Clone system is very smooth and works well. The wizard helps you setup the drive you need to clone to without you trying to figure out the formatting settings for the drive.
- Snapshot Management Enhancements: Introduces permanent snapshots, allowing users to retain specific snapshots indefinitely, and provides tools to manage disk usage and snapshot age effectively. This works very nicely on cloning file share folders your only limit is the size of the drive your copying to.
- Source Snapshots: Enables the creation of snapshots on source volumes at scheduled times, even if the destination is unavailable, offering an additional layer of data protection.
- CCC Mobile Backup: A new companion iOS app that facilitates the backup of photos and files from iOS devices to external storage, network-attached storage (NAS), or a Mac running CCC 7. The app is available for download on the iOS App Store, with a £2.99 in-app purchase per destination type for unlimited backups. I have not tested this feature is not currently available in the UK App Store. For copying IOS devices I would look at either pay Apple for the cloud backup feature and use the built in feature for backups. The other option I would look at is plug the device into a Mac and run the full backup from the Mac to backup the device. For Photos running a sync between photos on the Mac and the IOS device works very smoothly it also gives you a offline version of your photos which is always handy to have.
Here we have CCC cloning a Target Disc mode drive (running Ventura) plugged in via Thunderbolt 3 to a USB ext drive from a Spare 15″ MacBook Pro Running Sequoia.
Considerations:
While CCC 7 excels in many areas, creating bootable backups on Apple Silicon Macs remains inconsistent due to Apple’s security protocols, which may prevent successful booting from cloned external drives. I have tested this on several devices and Intel works very smoothly Apple Silicon does seem to be a bit hot and cold depending on a Full clone of the OS or just the Data folders user profile.
Overall, CCC 7 continues to be a robust and reliable backup solution, offering extensive features and responsive customer support, making it a valuable tool for macOS users seeking comprehensive data protection. Its a viable software competitor to SuperDuper.
Here is the linked article for SuperDuper Review.
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