An Internal 960GB Clone Backup Volume

2012-07-11 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: backup, Carbon Copy Cloner, cloning, Mac Pro, Other World Computing, SSD

This is a clone backup setup I’d love to keep (except for the expense), but until I have to return the loaner SSD, I decided to give it a try in “production”— I’ve installed a 960GB OWC Mercury Electra Max solid state drive (SSD) in the lower optical bay of my Mac Pro. I literally popped the cover, and plugged it in (I didn’t bother with a bracket).

My main storage for my key files less than ~9 months old is my Master volume, a RAID-0 stripe of OWC SSDs. MasterClone is the 960GB backup volume.

While Time Machine offers hourly protection, it does not provide rapid recovery of an entire volume. When I have a failure (“if” is not realistic!), a clone provides instant and full access to everything that was one the volume that was cloned, whereas Time Machine might take hours to restore, a huge headache for anyone without idle time on their hands. Time Machine is best used for protection for recently-changed files or folders (past few hours or days), where regular full backups have not yet been made.

There is nothing special here about it being a Mac Pro or SSD— any drive will do on any Mac (avoid USB2 if possible— very slow). The SSD just makes it super fast and painless to keep working while the clone runs.

Main working drive Master and its backup clone MasterClone

Manual clone

Just choose Source (from) of your volume to be cloned, and choose the appropriate Destination for the clone.

Cloning from Master to MasterClone

Scheduled clone

Click the Schedule this task... button seen above to schedule the task at the desired interval .

A scheduled clone from Master to MasterClone