Fixing Macs and Networks Since 1990
Excellent advice, in my humble opinion:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204759
“Summary: Use common sense and caution when you use your Mac, just like you would in any social context. There is no product, utility, or magic talisman that can protect you from all the evils of mankind.”
and
If there is one thing we learn from the world of Technology: Things Change.
In days past, we made a “bootable clone” backup to an external drive, which could be used to start up a(nother) Mac. Need a new battery in your laptop or had to send your Mac to Apple for repair? Software update gone bad and your computer won’t boot? No problem, just connect your bootable clone drive to another computer, choose it as the Startup Disk and get work done while your machine is out for service.
The concept of a bootable clone has, very sadly, gone the way of the Dodo. Starting in Mojave (MacOS 10.14) and continuing through newer operating systems: Catalina (10.15), Big Sur (MacOS 11.x) and now Monterey (MacOS 12.x), and with modern Macintosh hardware (including Macs with the “T2” fingerprint scanner/security chip and Macs with Apple silicon “M1” processors), Apple has made making and keeping a bootable clone unreliable.
Mike Bombich discusses the details in this excellent article:
As noted in the article above, Apple’s operating system is now “cryptographically signed” upon installation and this signing is only possible with an Apple-built software tool. This means the clever tools Carbon Copy Cloner uses to make a backup drive “bootable” no longer work.
So how does this change the situation where you’ve had an issue with your computer and need to get back up and running ASAP? Given the inability to create a bootable external drive, Apple is now forcing us to rely on their “Migration Assistant” (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204350) to restore data from a “data only” backup. Unfortunately this can take hours while your data restores, vs. the near-immediate uptime of restarting from a bootable clone.
In the event of a catastrophe on your Mac, the process of restoring will now look something like this:
Here is Apple’s Support article on the process: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204350
As you can see, this process can be quite time consuming (~3-6+ hours) vs. time it takes to boot from your external backup drive.
There is no “fix” for this situation. Apple has chosen to make Mac OS and the Mac hardware more secure (as required by customers and current security, virus, malware and ransomeware vulnerabilities). Security is a good thing; unfortunately it comes with an inconvenient price tag sometimes.
For now, there is nothing you need to change about your Carbon Copy Cloner backups. CCC will continue to make full backups of everything on your Mac and can be used in the future with Migration Assistant (your CCC backup is called a “Startup Disk” in Migration Assistant-speak) to copy your user account, data and settings to a new computer or an erased computer with a newly installed operating system. If you haven’t updated to Carbon Copy Cloner version 6 yet (provides important compatibility fixes for macOS Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey), I recommend doing so. Choose “Check for Updates…” from the Carbon Copy Cloner menu. The update is only $20.
There is a new feature in Dropbox which allows you to back up the contents of an external hard drive, SSD, flash drive, etc. You may see a message when you connect an external drive, asking if you want to back it up.
This can be a nice way to back up a flash drive or external data drive, but Dropbox may ask if you want to backup your Carbon Copy Cloner and/or Time Machine external backup drive(s). Unless there is a compelling reason to make a redundant backup of your backup drive(s) to Dropbox, I recommend you click the “Don’t ask me again” box and click the “Not now” button:
If you do allow Dropbox to backup your external backup drive(s), note that those drives can contain a LOT of data and will possibly fill the capacity of your Dropbox account. In addition, the upload process will likely take a long time, making your internet connection perform more slowly during the upload. I don’t recommend this.
If you don’t want to see requests from Dropbox to backup external drives when you connect them in the future, you can disable this feature in Dropbox:
1. Click the Dropbox icon in your menu bar
2. Click the circular icon at the upper right.
3. Choose “Preferences…”
4. Click the “Backups” icon at the top
5. UN-check “Show setup notifications when new external drives are plugged in.”:
Now when a new external drive, flash drive, etc. is connected, Dropbox won’t pester you about backing it up.
If you’ve already allowed Dropbox to backup your external backup drive(s), you will see an icon in your Dropbox with the name(s) of the external drives. For example, note the “Kirk’s Flash Drive” icon in my Dropbox below. You can safely delete these items from your Dropbox account to save space:
