Direct Clone or Disk Image using Carbon Copy Cloner?

Previously was using Carbon Copy Cloner to back up to disk images on an external USB HDD, and thought that disk images were the only way.

Having set up CCC again to clone onto a new external HDD after the previous HDD's failure, I realise that it is possible to do a direct clone (files cloned directly, ie not enclosed in a disk image).

What are the advantages of backing up to disk images as opposed to direct clones? (As I'm backing up multiple Macs onto the same external HDD, I don't require the clones to be bootable)

Prembo

Posted 2016-11-01T21:32:02.903

Reputation: 321

From what I read, doing a bootable direct clone using CCC had its obvious advantage of being bootable. But is it as easy to restore a HDD volume from a direct file clone it is from a disk image? – Prembo – 2016-11-02T12:50:52.363

Answers

Personally, I've never worked to .dmg, having just a single machine to backup, but that would seem the way to go for multiple machines, keeps everything separate.

A straight clone would be a bootable image of one machine only [per partition if you pre-partitioned it].

Tetsujin

Posted 2016-11-01T21:32:02.903

Reputation: 22 456

system?
linux = dd command
Windows Acronis Clone
osx = dd command

dd options

> dd  if=<source file name> of=<target file name>

Eros

Posted 2016-11-01T21:32:02.903

Reputation: 1

This doesn't answer the question and is pretty low on content. Why would you recommend Acronis? What would be the advantage of using dd? With the requirement of the original question using dd in that manner might be problematic as well. – Seth – 2016-11-11T08:40:18.547

dd can create a clone of a hard drive. Whether or not this is bootable depends on the formatting you choose for your media.

Shit4brains

Posted 2016-11-01T21:32:02.903

Reputation: 1