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Carbon Copy Cloner

What isn’t backed up?

Backups don’t include everything. Here are details of those items excluded from Time Machine backups, and why they’re excluded.

May 2, 2025 Macs, Technology

Excluding folders and files from Time Machine, Spotlight, and iCloud Drive

A brief reference to excluding items from being backed up, from Spotlight indexing their contents, and for them to be copied up to iCloud Drive.

July 9, 2024 Macs, Technology

Where should you back up to?

Consider the fidelity of backup copies, the speed of a backup method, and the risk of losing the contents of that backup. And test backups by restoring samples from them.

June 7, 2024 Macs, Technology

Time Machine backing up different file systems

Classic TM backed up HFS+ to HFS+; current TM backs up APFS to APFS. But what if you want to back up a mixture of APFS and HFS+ volumes?

June 4, 2024 Macs, Technology

Why you shouldn’t try cloning your Apple silicon Mac’s startup disk

For 18 years, cloning a boot disk was popular and effective. It was even used as a way of defragmenting free space in housekeeping. Why doesn’t it work with Apple’s new Macs?

June 3, 2024 Macs, Technology

A layered approach to preserving documents

Preserve documents according to how much time or money would be needed to replace them. For work in progress, macOS versioning can be a great help.

February 8, 2024 Macs, Technology

Scheduling and dispatch of backups and other background activities

Automatic Time Machine backups aren’t scheduled to run at precise times, but when it’s convenient. This explains how, and what to do if goes wrong.

November 28, 2023 Macs, Technology

Backup errors, iCloud Drive and the limits of APFS

Two different errors when backing up two different Macs, a recursive RTFD document, and APFS path length limits. But what’s this about FileProvider?

November 15, 2023 Macs, Technology

Freeing space to upgrade to Sonoma

Should you just try to upgrade in the hope that your Mac’s storage has sufficient free space? What can you do to free up a bit more if needed?

September 19, 2023 Macs, Technology

Why cloning a System volume isn’t a good idea any more

We even used to use it to defrag free space on a disk: clone the volume to another disk, and clone it back again. Why is cloning becoming so hard now?

September 15, 2023 Macs, Technology

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