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  #1  
Old 10-28-2022, 06:46 PM
fork fork is offline
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Big Sur bootable backup

I finally made the jump to Big Sur a few months ago on a 2020 iMac and I've been happily doing backups with SD and CCC. As you know CCC outright states they can't back up any Big Sur or later systems as bootable backups. But I must have misunderstood something I read stating that SD had figured out a way around this.

Today I tried to boot from a freshly made Big Sur backup (using SD) residing on an external SSD drive and found it was impossible. I had used your 3.6 so I Googled and found an entry in your blog about 3.7 which stated 3.7 is "fully compatible with Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura, the latest releases of macOS, is Apple silicon native, and produces fully bootable HFS+ and APFS backups faster and easier than ever."

"Fully bootable" sounded good.

I tried 3.7. Same problem - couldn't choose it in System Preferences > Startup Disk.

So after more research found your Oct 17 blog post that pointed the finger at Apple.

OK, now I'm trying to understand how this might work.

I have this recent backup on an SSD. Do I run the Big Sur installer and choose the SSD as target and after that's done, I can boot from it?

If yes, can I use a newer version of the installer (11.7.1)? The backup of have uses Big Sur 11.6

Are there other monsters lurking in the hidden recesses of that backup that will prevent booting from it?
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Old 10-28-2022, 06:48 PM
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dnanian dnanian is offline
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As indicated in the blog post, you need to use Option+Boot (or Power+Boot on Apple silicon). to boot, since the snapshot has to be created in a secure environment.

See this post: https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/ind...ot_a_marathon/
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Old 10-29-2022, 04:19 PM
fork fork is offline
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Erase?

I tried using my SSD backup drive plugged into the back of my iMac as the boot drive. It was formatted correctly etc. but when I option-boot I don't see it as a boot drive - just the internal Apple drive.

Since I made the initial backup months ago, I'm not sure if I actually did Step 2 in your directions.


"2. Then, make an initial Erase, then copy backup. Erase, then copy is selected in Options under During copy."


If it's already formatted in Disk Utility, why would you need to choose Erase again?

I'm guessing that's the key to my boot problem but I'd like to know why it's required.
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Old 10-29-2022, 04:20 PM
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Because, as indicated in the post, the OS is copied with the replicator. The replicator runs when you do an erase-then-copy (because it fully whacks the destination; we wouldn't want to run it during Smart Update).
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Old 10-30-2022, 11:27 AM
fork fork is offline
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Success!

The Erase, then copy worked. I didn't do the Disk Utility step since this drive had been formatted correctly before the original backup. Option-boot now let me choose the backup as boot disk and it worked normally.

I thought it was interesting that after booting to the backup, the Internal Apple SSD that I had backed up from didn't show up in System Preferences > Startup Disk. The internal drive still worked when I Option-booted back to it.

Thanks for your patient help.
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Old 10-30-2022, 03:45 PM
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Indeed, I've mentioned that at the blog before... glad you figured it out.
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