Why Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

[davebarnes]

The SuperDuper! Users Guide states: "use Disk Utility to erase the drive...and use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format."

Why Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

Why not Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive) or Mac OS Extended or Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, journaled)?

And do I really need journaling on a backup drive/partition?

Do the formats of the source drive and the destination drives have to identical?
What if I am trying to make the destination bootable?

thanks,
dave

[dnanian]

Because the default file system for OSX is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Journaling is, in general, always worthwhile. Case sensitivity is usually a big mistake to turn on, since some native applications will not work case-sensitively. Don't do it unless you really have to.

The formats do not have to be identical, no, but in general they are. Not sure what you're asking regarding bootability, though.

Really: DO NOT use case-sensitive volumes unless you really, really have to.

[macmandu]

New here...I'm trying to clone the internal drive on my MBP to a new drive. Tried another app and had problems which could be related to case-sensitive. I'm going to try SD now. My internal drive is Mac OS Extended, Case-sensitive, Journaled. To be clear, can/should I clone it to a drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), w/o Case-sensitive? I.e. it's okay to do that, not have them be the same? Thank you!

[dnanian]

Yes, you can do that, but you'll likely need to use Smart Update, since Erase, then copy will try to preserve case-sensitive when it erases.

[macmandu]

The old drive was formatted case-sensitive, the new one is not. Are you saying that Erase then Copy will change the format of the new drive to be case-sensitive like the one it is copying from?

[dnanian]

I believe it will, yes, since it copies the attributes on erase from the source partition. As I said, use Smart Update and it'll work.