Like many software titles receiving updates in advance of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, version 3.5 of Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner backup utility adds compliance with the Gatekeeper security feature and includes the capability to create a bootable Mountain Lion installer volume (once you’ve purchased and downloaded Mountain Lion). However, the bigger news is that the app is no longer donationware as Bombich Software transitions to a commercial model to grow its development and support team. Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5 now costs $39.95, but is available at a 25 percent discount ($29.96) through 12 August 2012. If you previously paid for Carbon Copy Cloner and checked the “I paid” button, you won’t be asked to purchase the app again (though if your preferences have been cleared, be sure to read the release notes to learn how to retrieve your registration info).

The new release overhauls its Recovery HD support for instances where you have multiple backup volumes with different operating systems, enabling you to associate a Recovery HD with each one and apply the appropriate operating system to each Recovery HD partition. Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5 now requires 10.6 Snow Leopard or later, but Bombich Software will continue to provide user support and fixes for version 3.4 used on 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard installations for the near future. The new release also improves performance of deleting scheduled tasks, fixes an issue that occurred when running Mac OS X 10.7.4 with a 64-bit kernel that resulted in external volumes not mounting when booted from a backup volume, and updates the graphics for displaying on the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. ($39.95 new, free update if you donated previously, 8.6 MB)