CCC 6 Release Notes – CCC Knowledge Base

CCC 6.1.4

November 29, 2022

CCC will now preserve the space savings of pure "cloned" files (duplicated via the clonefile() function, e.g. duplicated in the Finder) when copying from an APFS volume to another APFS volume.
CCC will now preserve the "Date Added" attribute on files and folders on filesystems that support that attribute.
CCC will no longer raise concerns about dropped cloud-only placeholder files. With a minor adjustment and some additional testing of several scenarios, we have determined that there is no longer a restore concern related to dropping these placeholder files. If you previously excluded the CloudStorage folder from your backup, you may remove that exclusion. You're also welcome to leave the exclusion in place. In our tests, the cloud service providers populated the absent content just fine.
Errors related to minor filesystem corruption in /Users/username/Library/Biome on macOS Ventura are now suppressed.
Improved the handling of errors when free space is depleted on the destination volume.
The "Only on the next run" and "Once a quarter" options are no longer hidden in the frequency popup menu adjacent to the "Find and replace corrupted files" setting. Same deal for the "Archives that are older than" option in the SafetyNet pruning limit popup menu in Advanced Settings > Preflight.
The "Command+R" keyboard shortcut for starting a task now also works for starting a task group.
Fixed an issue in which the throttling mechanism applied to "When the source or destination is reconnected" tasks was not getting applied consistently.
Fixed an edge case in Ventura where the "Legacy Bootable Copy" method would fail with a "destination is full" error in cases where the destination was a disk image and the source was a clean install of macOS Ventura.
Added a Ventura download link to the macOSInstaller Media Assistant.
Added a global exclusion for a "@Recently-snapshot" folder that appears on some NAS devices. Copying each snapshot within this folder will typically overrun the capacity of the destination.
Fixed preflight mounting and ownership enabling on Remote Mac destination volumes on Ventura+ Macs.
When CCC is configured to copy files from a volume that lacks support for file ownership (e.g. a NAS volume, or any volume with ownership disabled), ownership of files copied to the destination (when applicable) is set to the user account that configured the CCC task. This update fixes an issue in which numeric user account IDs larger than 32768 were getting improperly applied. This is not a common scenario; typically user account IDs start from 501, but in some corporate environments they can be much larger.

CCC 6.1.3

September 19, 2022

This version of CCC adds official support for macOS 13 Ventura. This update includes changes that affect all supported macOS versions, however, so we recommend this update for all CCC v6 users.

The "System exclusion" is no longer applied in cases where the destination is a subfolder on the startup disk.
Fixed an issue in which "on reconnect" tasks were not correctly getting throttled according to the task configuration if the task was also configured to prompt the user to proceed when the missing volume was reconnected.
The Compare window now shows files discovered on the source and destination separately. Especially for really slow destinations like NAS volumes, this will give a clearer indication of ongoing progress.
The clonefile replacement procedure will no longer be used if snapshots are disabled on the destination. The primary purpose of using that procedure is to use storage more efficiently so that we can retain more snapshots, and that's moot if we're not retaining snapshots.
When you auto-fill a password in CCC's Email Settings (i.e. from the system's "Passwords..." menu option that appears when the password text field is given focus), that password is now correctly stored in CCC's keychain.
Task groups can now be deleted via the Task menu (e.g. Command+Delete) and via the "Additional Actions" menu in the sidebar.
Resolved an issue in which a task would appear stalled when converting a disk image to a read-only format. Fixed an unrelated progress indication issue in the same scenario.
Automated tasks will now be skipped any time a restore task is running to remove any possible conflict between a restore task and a backup task. Users are welcome to run backup tasks manually while a restore task is running, this change only affects automated tasks.
Fixed the presentation of a snapshot creation failure in cases where the destination is in the midst of encryption conversion.
The minimum time threshold for "When files are modified on the source" tasks is now 1 minute, but the default is now 5 minutes. The minimum data threshold is now 0; when set to 0, CCC will start an event when changes have been made to a file on the source (and the time threshold is met).
The CCC Dashboard will now proactively open CCC if CCC's helper tool lacks Full Disk Access. Likewise, the Dashboard will open CCC if corruption in CCC's task database has been detected.
CCC now applies a two-week sanity limit on the Quick Update feature. We were finding some cases where macOS managed to have retained multiple weeks of FSEvent records, and it was taking longer to slog through all of those records than it would take to simply re-enumerate the source and destination. So if a Quick Update task hasn't run successfully in the last two weeks, it will now proceed with a full audit of the source and destination.
Added a new "Settings" column to the task events table in the Task History window that will indicate when the "Quick Update" or "Backup Health Check" settings were applied to a given task event. This column is hidden by default; right-click on the table header row to choose which columns should be visible.
Ventura: Modified the steps for granting Full Disk Access. It's now one step! That's right, just one step! Just start dragging the CCC Privacy Fish and CCC will pull some strings in the background to magically make the full disk access table appear for the drop.
Ventura: Fixed the filesystem identity of ExFAT and FAT32 volumes in the disk chart (i.e. when you click on the Source or Destination selector, or select a volume in CCC's sidebar).
Ventura: Adopted a new macOS procedure for adding the CCC Dashboard login item.
Ventura: Adjusted how connections to a remote Mac are initiated from a Ventura client to accommodate changes to the scp utility that are specific to macOS Ventura.
Mostly Ventura: Fixed a memory access issue that occurs (with more frequency on Ventura) in the SQLite encryption library that CCC has been using to encrypt task audit and task history databases. After applying this update, CCC will temporarily decrypt the task audit and task history databases, then re-encrypt them with a replacement encryption library. In the unlikely event that an exception occurs while decrypting one of these databases, the affected database will simply be recreated. This change has no effect on task configurations, which are stored in a separate, non-encrypted database, and no effect on any of your data on your backup disk.

CCC 6.1.2

May 23, 2022

Fixed an issue in which CCC's CloneKitService could report an exception when an edge-case error condition was encountered while reading or writing a file.
Snapshot thinning on the source and snapshot/archive thinning on the destination is now skipped for restore tasks.
Fixed a cosmetic issue in the snapshot navigator when a subfolder is selected as the source.
Made a few small adjustments to how task configuration is handled when selecting the current startup disk as the destination (e.g. to a restore task).
Addressed an issue that could cause CCC to errantly report that multiple volumes were present with the same unique identifier.
Fixed the window location of the Dashboard window when multiple screens are present. The Dashboard window will now be presented next to the menubar icon that was clicked, rather than retaining its previous window position.
The minimum data threshold for "When files are modified on the source" tasks is now 1MB (i.e. 0.001GB).
Addressed an issue specific to macOS Catalina in which a verification of files on the source or destination would errantly report System volume files as missing.
Resolved a latency issue that a handful of users were noticing when switching between tasks. We tracked the latency down to poor performance of Apple's "nsattributedstringagent" service on macOS Monterey. In some cases the service was crashing repeatedly, and when macOS throttled its relaunch, there would be a noticeable delay when CCC attempted to render the Task Plan. We no longer rely on that macOS service for rendering the Task Plan.
Fixed a couple cases where the background color of a view was not switching automatically when the system appearance was changed in System Preferences (e.g. Dark to Light).
Corrected the error handling in cases where unreadable folders are encountered on the source.
Corrected the presentation of dropped OneDrive placeholder files for pre-Monterey users.
Addressed a race condition that could occur if two tasks try to simultaneously mount the same NAS volume. One task would "win", the other task would wait indefinitely for the system's NetAuthSysAgent service to reply.

CCC 6.1.1

March 23, 2022

Fixed an exception that was causing tasks to fail with no clear reason when a task was configured with a remote Mac source or destination, and the specification for that remote Mac was missing a "volume name" attribute.
macOS 12.3 introduced a problem that causes Legacy Bootable Copies of the system to fail on Apple Silicon Macs. In earlier beta builds of 12.3, that failure rendered the destination unmountable. In the final release of 12.3, that failure is now innocuous. CCC now ignores the error and completes the task. Please note that we still recommend using this procedure only when making a copy of the system that you intend to use immediately (e.g. when migrating to a new disk, or setting up a sandbox test system). A CCC "Standard Backup" provides a more comprehensive strategy for regularly-updated backups.
Fixed a cosmetic accounting issue that was making it look like more files were re-verified than were copied. Also fixed an errant subtask timeout that was occurring during postflight verification.

CCC 6.1

February 23, 2022

Fixed an issue in which CCC was unable to create files and folders in some OneDrive-related folders on the destination.
Added an option to reveal the Advanced Settings persistently in the main window.
Added a contextual menu to the CCC menubar icon for "quick access" functions (e.g. open CCC, run a task, quit the Dashboard). Right-click on the CCC menubar icon to access this menu.
Added navigation buttons to the CCC toolbar to make it easier to get back to a task after making volume configuration changes (e.g. when adjusting snapshot settings).
Added an option for a light background for the sidebar (i.e. in Light Mode).
Added settings to choose a specific appearance (i.e. light or dark, independent of the system setting).
The Source and Destination selectors are now enabled while a task is running. You can click on these to see details about the source and destination (e.g. disk usage, free space) as the task progresses.
Task History events now show information about how many files and how much data was removed from the destination (in addition to how many files and how much data was copied to the destination).
Every Mac that is supported by macOS Catalina has native USB 3.0 support, so now CCC's Copy Coach proactively warns when a source or destination is connected via USB 2.0 (e.g. due to using an old USB hub or non-USB 3.0 compliant cable).
The Dashboard now shows both "last run time" and "next scheduled run time" for each task. Previously this was an option, but presenting both at the same time seems to be what most people are looking for.
Enhanced the search feature in the CCC Documentation window to offer an option to search the current page for matching text, or to execute a search of the entire CCC Kbase.
Task groups can now be specified via the "Run another task" option in Advanced Settings > Postflight.
Fixed a minor apparent discrepancy when using the "Verify files copied by this task" feature on a NAS volume. Previously this would show size-based differences due to the absence of extended attributes despite that those were deliberately not copied.
Audit records can now be exported to a CSV file.
Added a "Copy Link" option to the Tasks contextual menu. These links will open CCC and select the applicable task. These can be useful alongside other Mac automation.
Fixed a couple conditions where CCC would report an error and fail to create a symlink becase a folder with the same name already existed on the destination. Fixed a similar issue where CCC was unable to create new folder on the destination because a file (often a symlink) with the same name already existed.
Fixed a mouse tracking issue in the CCC Dashboard "mini progress" window that could make it impossible to click on the pause/stop buttons.
The CCC Dashboard window size and placement is now retained across launches.
Made a handful of adjustments to how older versions of files are presented in the Snapshot Comparison Browser. Checksums are now calculated on-the-fly for any files smaller than 2MB.
The System exclusion limit is no longer applied to a subfolder destination when the source OS is Big Sur or later.
Made some adjustments that should improve performance when using an ExFAT or NTFS volume as a source or destination.
Made some modest improvements to the "time remaining" estimate. This estimate will now include componesation for time that that will be required for re-verifying files that were copied (if specified for the task).

CCC 6.0.5

November 11, 2021

We added a new "macOS Downgrade Assistant" feature, accessible via CCC's Utilities menu. The Downgrade Assistant can assess a backup volume's compatibility with Migration Assistant, and will create macOS Installer media using a specified volume and installer application.
We added another small new feature in the source and destination selectors. If the selected source or destination is a network volume, or a folder on a network volume, you can hold down the Option key to reveal a "Switch to AFP" or "Switch to SMB" menu item in the Source and Destination selectors. We frequently see slow performance and errors from SMB-mounted volumes, and we often recommend that people try "the other" protocol when the current protocol isn't working out. Now we've made it really simple to switch between the two to see if using a different protocol will yield better results.
Tasks in the sidebar can once again be arranged when the sidebar sorting is configured as "Manual".
Made some adjustments that should improve performance when a task is writing large files to a rotational destination. Made a separate adjustment that should improve performance when writing to ExFAT-formatted volumes.
Fixed a display issue in the Legacy Bootable Backup Assistant that would occur when selecting a SoftRAID destination volume.
Fixed an issue that arose recently in macOS Monterey that was causing failures while trying to configure new Remote Macintosh tasks.
Fixed an issue affecting tasks configured to run "When the source or destination is remounted" in which the tasks would fail to run on volume appearance if the destination's System volume had been removed.

CCC 6.0.4

October 20, 2021

This version of CCC adds official support for macOS 12 Monterey

This update includes a handful of changes that are applicable to Catalina and Big Sur users too:

The expansion state of the last task group in the sidebar is now properly retained across launches.
The order of tasks within a task group as shown in the sidebar now tracks the run order defined in the "Upcoming Group and Task Events" table when the sidebar is configured for manual sort ordering. Likewise, tasks within a group cannot be sorted manually in the sidebar when the sidebar is configured for manual sorting. Order the tasks within the "Upcoming Group and Task Events" table to set that custom order.
Improved the handling of some failure cases when copying the Catalina System volume, e.g. when the destination volume drops offline, or when the destination Data volume can't be unmounted.
Fixed an issue in which CCC would fail to mount the destination Data volume in cases where the destination System volume had been removed.
CCC will no longer remove the System volume from an encrypted destination volume after an OS upgrade. We can't update that System volume, so it becomes essentially useless, but removing it exposes a bug in Disk Utility in which it's unable to unlock the volume. Also fixed an issue in which CCC was failing to unlock those orphaned Data volumes.
Fixed a couple issues that were causing exceptions.

CCC 6.0.3

September 14, 2021

Fixed an issue in which CCC was unable to replace a folder on the destination with a symbolic link (i.e. because a folder on the source had been replaced by a symbolic link). This issue primarily affected macOS Catalina users, but could also affect Big Sur users for tasks that used the "Don't delete anything" SafetyNet setting.
Improved the handling of cases where a source NAS presents a symlink as an ordinary file. Fixed an accounting issue that led to unusually high "data copied" values in those cases.
Resolved a condition in which the "Maintain a record of transactions" checkbox became practically uncheck-able in CCC 6.0.2.
Fixed a permissions issue that can cause applications to not work correctly when restored from a volume whose ownership is disabled.
Relative date references (e.g. "Today", "Yesterday") in the Task Plan and Task History window are now correctly updated when a date change event occurs (i.e. at midnight).
SafetyNet pruning settings are now consistently visible when the destination is HFS+ formatted.
Errors that occur due to the OneDrive service's interference with CCC archiving activity on the destination are now suppressed. These typically go away on their own without intervention.
Fixed a logic issue that caused the "Never show this dialog" setting to be ignored for the "Remove task audit" dialog.
Fixed the "Bring all to front" menu item in the Window menu.
Improved the handling of manual sort order changes of the Tasks list.
The CCC Dashboard window position is now retained when it's closed and later reopened.
Fixed an issue in which CCC would not remove additional snapshots from the destination when free space was exhausted in the middle of a backup task (specific to cases where SafetyNet was disabled).
Fixed an issue that could cause slow performance during postflight re-verification of files copied by the current task in cases where the task was also configured to use the "Find and replace corrupted files" setting.
CCC will no longer create a snapshot on the source when the source and destination are folders on the same APFS volume. Instead CCC will use the APFS clonefile() function to make clones of files in these cases.
Resolved a case where CCC was stripping the destination volume's custom icon in a folder-to-volume task configuration.
The search field in the Task History window Audit tab now yields results that match folder names as well as file names.
Added a new "Last Successful Run" token for the email notification template.
Added a Start button to the "Upcoming Group and Task Events" view for task groups.
Monterey: Updated how APFS volume disk usage is calculated on macOS Monterey.
Monterey: Fixed a rendering issue for the Task Plan text on macOS Monterey.
Eliminated some spurious "updated attributes" transactions that were getting created when backing up to a NAS volume.
Resolved a conflict between the "Remove excluded items" setting and custom protection rules. Custom protection rules now have precedence over the "Remove excluded items" setting.

CCC 6.0.2

June 30, 2021

By default, CCC will process up to four folders simultaneously and copy up to eight files simultaneously. This update reduces simultaneous folder handling to two if CCC cannot verify that both the source and destination are Solid State devices. We have also exposed a setting that allows the user to adjust this value manually in Advanced Settings > Performance & Analysis, including an option that configures the task to use the CCC v5 legacy file copier instead of the new file copier.
Addressed a case where CCC would abort the backup task, indicating that a subtask had timed out, in cases where the destination was particularly slow to deliver information about a folder that had an exceptionally high file count (e.g. tens of thousands, or millions).
Fixed a math issue that was previously causing inflight snapshot or SafetyNet archive removal to not remove enough snapshots or archives in cases where the destination was very full.
Fixed a scheduling issue that was causing "When files are modified on the source" tasks to not resume monitoring when the task was back within a user-specified time limit.
"Next run date" in the CCC Dashboard now correctly rolls over from "tomorrow" to "today" when the date changes.
Addressed a handful of crashers and exceptions.
When thinning snapshots, CCC now indicates the name of the snapshot using the user's preferred date format.
The "Files evaluated" statistic is now updated appropriately during a Preview run.
File and folder name changes that only affect the case of characters in the string are now detected (i.e. when that is the only change to the source file) and applied to the destination.
CCC will no longer preserve system-immutable file flags when restoring items to the startup disk. This was leading to the creation of a folder (typically "Users") that couldn't be removed by the Finder.
CCC now properly imposes a High Sierra+ requirement for the Remote Macintosh feature.
Fixed the tooltip on the Source selector when a Big Sur startup volume is selected. Technically that volume is not mounted, but pointing this out is not really necessary.
Added color pickers for the lines on the Dynamic Performance Chart.
Improved the handling of moved folders in the Quick Update feature. Technically these don't cause modifications to files, but nonetheless we should apply these changes when the task runs.
Fixed an errant case-conflict error that can occur on Case Sensitive APFS destination volumes when a folder name has a non-normalized Unicode character.
Corrected the behavior of the "Remove excluded files" setting in the Task Filter window. Folders were only getting removed when explicitly excluded via a custom rule (not when unchecked in the main table), and files that were only implicitly excluded (i.e. via the default filter behavior) were getting removed. While that matched CCC v5 behavior, it was not the more conservative result that we were aiming for.
When creating a read-only disk image, CCC now uses sparsebundle as the default format for the intermediate read-write disk image. Big Sur, in particular, seems reluctant to create sparseimage files, especially on NAS volumes.
Fixed a timing issue that led to errors when running a "When files are changed on the source" task soon after startup.
Addressed an edge case in which a source NAS device may lie about the nature of a symlink (i.e. initially the NAS reports that it is a regular file), leading to errors.
Corrected the presentation of the startup disk's custom Snapshot Retention Policy.

CCC 6.0.1

May 26, 2021

Fixed a handful of crashers, and some cases where a task would fail, indicating an exception had occurred in the CloneKitService.
CCC no longer removes the "has a custom icon" bit from the destination volume's root folder, causing the Finder to not show the icon.
Clicking the "X" widget to dismiss a CCC notification in Notification Center will no longer activate CCC.
Files that fail postflight verification are now automatically tossed onto CCC's "try it again at the end of the task" queue for a second chance. If the secondary copy and verify fails, then we report the error.
Fixed an issue in which a task that was configured to create a bootable backup would fail, indicating that the destination volume was read-only.
Improved the handling of low-space conditions in cases where SafetyNet or snapshots are enabled on the destination.
Addressed a memory leak that led to task failure while handling sparse files on APFS volumes (e.g. Dropbox online-only placeholder files were a big driver of this one).
Addressed a handful of cases where a task would errantly report a "subtask timeout" while working through folders with very large numbers of files (e.g. 150K), despite no actual stall occurring.
When copying content from a volume that has ownership disabled (especially NAS volumes), the ownership of the items on the destination is now set to the user that created the CCC backup task.
Addressed an edge case in which CCC would miss some folders when copying from an APFS volume to a non-APFS volume (typically when an iTunes Music folder had a non-ASCII character in its name). Note that if you have a Quick Update task that matches this configuration, CCC 6.0.1 will automatically perform a "standard copy" audit of the destination during the next task event.
Improved the performance of the dynamic performance chart when moving the CCC window from a retina to non-retina display.
The End User License Agreement, and the preflight and postflight script names now appear correctly in Dark Mode.
Addressed a performance issue that led to a "subtask timeout" at the end of a task that was using the "Reverify files copied by this task" setting.
Fixed a loop condition that can occur if a destination NAS volume drops offline in the middle of a task and CCC lacks the credentials to remount that volume.

CCC 6.0

May 18, 2021

New file copier that offers faster performance and powers several of the new features noted below.
Compare: Offers a visual comparison of your task's source and destination, and provides details if the differences are the result of a task filter.
The new Dashboard offers one-click access to starting, stopping and monitoring your CCC tasks, plus details about recent task activity. The Dashboard also gives you a heads up to snapshot disk usage on the startup disk.
Postflight verification of files that were copied by the current backup task.
Ad hoc verification of files that were copied by the current task — source or destination.
The Snapshot Navigator allows you to step through older versions of your backups and get a preview of your files as they were at specific points in time.
Quick Update decreases the length of the backup by comparing a reduced list of folders provided by the macOS FSEvents service.
New scheduling option to run a task when a threshold of modifications have been made on the source.
Backup audit shows what was copied by your backup tasks, and why.
Dark Mode support.
Task Preview: See what changes CCC is going to make before actually making them.
Per-task control over the file copier's CPU usage.
You can temporarily pause a backup task.
A new, cleaner user interface. We reorganized the main window to make it smaller while making many of the controls and font sizes larger.
Refined Simple Mode – quitting and reopening CCC to switch modes is no longer necessary.
More detailed progress indication while a task is running, including a time remaining estimate.
File processing and transfer rates are now charted live during backup tasks.
Items that cause task errors can be excluded directly from the Task History Errors table.
CCC's Task Filter now offers support for respecting macOS "backupd" exclusions (i.e. exclusions defined for Time Machine).

Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.22

October 16, 2020 [macOS Big Sur qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.10

August 20, 2019 [macOS Catalina qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.5

September 17, 2018 [macOS Mojave qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1

April 24, 2018

Carbon Copy Cloner 5.0

August 24, 2017 [macOS High Sierra qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.10

September 16, 2016 [macOS Sierra qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.4

September 1, 2015 [OS X El Capitan qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0

October 1, 2014 [Mac OS X Yosemite qualification]

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5.3

October 22, 2013

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5

July 20, 2012

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4

July 20, 2011

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3

September 21, 2009

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.2

March 18, 2009

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1

March 24, 2008

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0

September 18, 2007

Carbon Copy Cloner 2.3

October 23, 2003

Carbon Copy Cloner 2.0

November 19, 2002

Carbon Copy Cloner 1.0

January 18, 2002