Creating Bootable Clone from Apple Silicon Mac

[mschmitt]

I missed another reason for a bootable backup: to have a platform that can run macOS installers on (I've had little luck with the USB flash drive installers), and to have a platform for pushing a clone of data back to the other machine.

I do keep all three types of backups, plus more. For my main machine, I have:

• Time Machine
• Secondary Time Machine, connected once a month
• SuperDuper! bootable clone, updated weekly
• Second SuperDuper! bootable clone, updated monthly
• Backup to cloud via Arq, holding data back for 5 years
• 2 SuperDuper! data-only copies, backed up monthly (alternately), with one stored offsite. The backup date is 2 weeks later than the other monthly backups.

Apparently I have a FOLD (Fear of Losing Data).

I think it dates back to when I had a great scheme for using Retrospect to backup my Mac to DDS tape. Everything was backed up weekly, rotating between 3 tapes, where once a month one of them was sent offsite and the 13th oldest tape added back in. So I was covered, completely.

And then my PowerMac couldn't start up anymore. So I bought a new iMac.

That's when I discovered I couldn't connect my SCSI DDS tape drive to the new iMac, which had no SCSI ports!

(I did mange to get the PowerMac to boot one last time and grab all the data off it. But I swore NEVER AGAIN will I be without a means to recover my data.)

[dnanian]

I was very sad to send my old Sony DAT autoloader to the junkpile in the sky...

[mschmitt]

Update: I got an external SSD and tried again to create a bootable clone from a M2 MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.6.2.

First attempt: SuperDuper erase-then-clone (ASR): same problem where ASR didn't update the dyld cache.

2nd attempt: Update Ventura on the 1st clone, using the full Ventura installer. This didn't work because Apple hasn't posted 13.6.2 yet to the App Store, and you can't downgrade. So, putting this idea aside until there's an App Store version >= what's on the source drive.

3rd attempt: While waiting for above, tried erasing the drive, installing Ventura 13.6.1 using the full installer, then Smart Update over it.

I know that's not recommended but I figured won't hurt to try it.

What happened is when I try to use System Settings to start up from the clone, it asks me to authorize users, then it asks me to select an owner, then to authorize users, then to select an owner, over and over. Is this something you've run into? Google returns no hits on that problem. (Note that I didn't get into that loop in attempt 1.)

(Planned 4th attempt will be to erase, use full Ventura installer, boot from that, and then migrate the data from the internal SSD. And hope that after doing that, it will continue to be a bootable clone after a later Smart Update puts the data back 100% in sync with the source.)

[dnanian]

That's not going to work - the user info held in the hidden volumes won't match what's in the data. You'd have to migrate for that...or you might be able to force a sync.

Can't you install your Ventura version from Recovery? That's the way to do it, typically, not by using an installer.

[mschmitt]

(Talking about idea #2: erase-then-copy followed by a macOS update to get the dyld cache fixed...)

The macOS downgrade issue is a moot point now since Apple posted Ventura 13.6.3 to the App Store. But I'd think I'd better apply the 13.6.3 update to the internal drive first, in case running the 13.6.3 full installer also does a firmware update.

What do you mean by "force a sync"?

I'll try the reinstall from macOS Recovery.

Note: based on previous experience, I'm not sure this will even work. That is, I think it will make the clone bootable, but then won't allow turning on FileVault.

[mschmitt]

Did another erase-then-copy, tried to startup from it, but it goes through the same authorize users, set owner loop as previously described. Which is weird, since this worked the first time I tried an erase-then-copy.

Do I need to completely erase (repartition) the drive to clear out whatever hidden data is there? What I did was erase the APFS container in that partition, changing it to HFS+, then erase that and create as APFS.

[dnanian]

There's no need to change things to HFS+. I would erase the whole drive, from the hardware (top), and format as APFS from the get-go.