Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.12
Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.12, bringing full support for making bootable backups of macOS 10.15 Catalina’s new read-only System volume and its Data volume sibling. The drive-cloning and backup utility also improves OneDrive and Dropbox placeholder file detection, allows the selection of a Catalina System volume that has been deleted from a destination volume group (and enables its re-creation), improves the reliability of HFS+-to-APFS conversions (particularly for slower destination devices), updates a fix in version 5.1.10 that addresses an issue where a remote Mac could go to sleep between CCC’s archive management and file copying requests, and adds “files copied” to the history output of the CCC command-line tool. ($39.99 new, free update, 15.9 MB, release notes, macOS 10.10+)
Does this now mean we can select an external drive as the startup volume? I have not yet upgraded to Catalina for a variety of reasons. I will do the CCC update today.
Theoretically yes, but it’s possible some things need to be true of the external drive, and for that I’d recommend double-checking with Bombich tech support.
Today I updated Carbon Copy Cloner, ran a backup to an external drive and I still get the message from Bombich that I can’t set an external drive as startup. Of course I haven’t yet updated to Catalina which I gather is where the announced change would occur. This might be the first in long time I haven’t done updates as soon as they’re released.
Have you created bootable backups on this external drive before? If not, there may be a problem with the drive enclosure. A good starting point for checking out how CCC determines bootability is this: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/closer-look-how-ccc-determines-bootability-destination-volume
My current MacBook Air was purchased in late 2018. At the time I decided that I want to clone the setup from my previous 11” MacBook Air. I tried to set the startup to the external hard drive that held my CCC backups and that was not allowed. Somehow though while I was fiddling around the new Mac selected a backup from another hard drive attached to my AirPort Extreme as a Time Machine backup. That worked although the transfer took several hours. The final result was good. I know there are other options using Startup Manager. I’m just wishing the process was simpler as it used to be. I’m proceeding cautiously this time.