Carbon Copy Cloner
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Carbon Copy Cloner 4 Release Notes

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This documentation is for an older version of CCC. You can find the latest version here.
Last updated on October 30, 2018

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.24

October 30, 2018

  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would crash when selecting a source or destination on a system running macOS 10.11 El Capitan.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.23

June 21, 2018

  • Improved the wording of an error message that is presented when CCC does not have permission to copy a particular file or folder.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.22

May 21, 2018

  • Fixed an issue that caused support request submissions to fail (i.e. via the "Ask a question about CCC" menu item in CCC's Help menu).
  • Addressed an edge-case scenario in which CCC would set overly-restrictive ownership/permissions settings on the destination root folder.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.21

February 12, 2018

  • CCC now handles an undocumented Keychain Services error code that was occurring when CCC was trying to open its keychain for the first time (i.e. before the keychain yet exists). This resolves an issue that some High Sierra users might have encountered when trying to save a password to CCC's keychain.
  • Fixed an issue in which a backup task involving a remote Mac would stall if the source or destination volume on the remote Mac was not available.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.20

October 25, 2017

  • High Sierra: Fixed an issue in which hidden files were not staying reliably hidden on HFS+ volumes.
  • High Sierra: Addressed errors related to updating the dynamic linker shared cache.
  • High Sierra: Errors that occur in /var/folders will no longer cause deletions to be suspended.
  • The "Show Details" button in task finished notifications presented as Alerts now works correctly.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.19

September 12, 2017

  • Improved the reliability of restarting a backup task to or from a remote Macintosh when the connection is dropped.
  • Addressed an error related to updating the kernel extension cache at the end of a backup task that was specific to macOS High Sierra.
  • Made some minor modifications to CCC's global exclusions list that resolves a startup delay when booting from the backup volume.
  • Clicking the Close button on a user notification presented as an alert will no longer open the CCC application on macOS High Sierra.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.18

August 16, 2017

  • Updating the dynamic linker shared cache is now enabled for High Sierra systems that have at least 4GB of RAM. Apple has addressed the issue that led to a watchdog reboot when running this utility, although it still consumes far too much memory to be practical for systems with less than 4GB of RAM.
  • Fixed an issue with resetting the password for an encrypted disk image.
  • A "454 temporary failure" error from an SMTP server is now properly handled.
  • Fixed an issue in which the SIP-related fileflags for root-level hidden items on the destination were stripped and not replaced.
  • Fixed a keychain retrieval bug that occurred when the hostname has a backslash character.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.17

July 19, 2017

  • Removed the beta expiration date (~September 5, 2017) that was errantly left in the 4.1.16 production release. Also fixed the issue that allowed that to slip past our release checklist.
  • Closing a notification that is presented as an alert will no longer cause CCC to open its Task History window on macOS High Sierra.
  • The disk usage of an APFS volume is now reported correctly when the APFS container has more than one volume.
  • Fixed a layout issue in the "destructive task warning" dialog.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.16

June 27, 2017

  • Addressed a wake event scheduling issue that was introduced in the 10.12.5 update (yes, we're finding more goodies in that update every week!). CCC normally associates a unique identifier with each wake event that it schedules. That identifier shows that the event was created by CCC and for a specific task. Should CCC need to cancel the wake event (e.g. because you delete the task), CCC looks up the wake event by that unique identifier and deletes it. Starting in 10.12.5, macOS ignores that unique identifier, so now all of the CCC wake events are identical. This led to orphaned wake events getting created. Normally these are harmless and a reboot always removes these, but this update clears them all and uses a new algorithm to identify and remove wake events.
  • Adds preliminary support for cloning from an APFS startup volume to an HFS+ backup volume (applicable only to macOS High Sierra).
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC's scheduled tasks were improperly scheduled when the system clock was set to January 1, 2001 on startup (e.g. in cases where the Mac's motherboard battery is dead).

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.15

May 19, 2017

  • Addressed another bug introduced by the 10.12.5 update that led to a harmless message getting interpreted as an error during the "Rebuilding Kernel Extension Cache" phase of bootable backup tasks.
  • Minor updates to the Spanish localization of CCC.
  • Added a "Show Task History" option to the Tasks contextual menu.
  • When creating a new disk image, CCC now applies more liberal access privileges to the root folder of the new disk image volume. Also corrected a permissions issue that caused startup problems when attempting to boot from a restored disk image.
  • The Task History window's filter criteria are now cleared when closing the window to avoid having them applied when opening the window in a different context (leading the user to believe that no task events have occurred recently, for example).

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.14

May 11, 2017

  • Addressed an issue introduced in an upcoming update to Sierra in which CCC was unable to mount recovery volumes to determine their OS versions.
  • Improved the sanity check that CCC imposes when responding to a system clock change notification. The previous sanity check that we had imposed was not sufficiently avoiding rescheduling tasks when the system clock was changed to 2040 and then back to a sane time.
  • Minor improvements to the CCC command-line utility.
  • Addressed an issue in which CCC would errantly mark tasks as suspended on systems with exceptionally slow startup disks.
  • Fixed a logic issue that could cause a backup task to appear stalled in the "Creating an archive of the Recovery HD" phase in cases where the source recovery volume could not be unmounted.
  • Addressed a race condition that could occasionally cause CCC's helper tool to crash upon launch. While this was uncommon, it could occasionally lead to corruption of CCC's keychain if that keychain was getting created upon loading the helper tool.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.13

January 12, 2017

  • Addressed an issue in which CCC was unable to save passwords to its keychain after migrating the CCC configuration from another Mac.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would periodically report that a task could not complete due to minor filesystem inconsistencies.
  • Addressed a Sierra-specific issue in which CCC would not recognize a freshly-created recovery volume due to it being named incorrectly by Disk Utility.
  • Implemented a workaround for cases where CCC's privileged helper tool is installed but disabled by the system.
  • We've received a couple reports of Sierra systems errantly setting the date forward to 2040, then immediately back to a sane value just a couple seconds later. Previously CCC would reschedule its tasks forward to 2040 in response to the clock change, but then not backwards to a sane time (because time isn't supposed to go backwards, right?). This version of CCC now implements a sanity check to avoid rescheduling tasks that far into the future.
  • Fixed an issue in which a scheduled task could resurrect itself if the user deleted it while it was running.
  • Packet corruption that causes the connection to a remote Mac to be terminated is now handled more gracefully. CCC will now automatically restart the backup task.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.12

December 8, 2016

  • Fixed a minor issue in which the "Elapsed time" value reported in user notifications was incorrect.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.11

December 6, 2016

  • Implemented a workaround for a macOS bug in which IOKit retains copies of virtual device objects for some hard drive enclosures when the devices are physically detached from the system. The presence of that remnant leads IOKit to create a new, duplicate device when the hard drive enclosure is reattached to the system. The presence of the duplicate device is usally harmless, but it would lead to errors from CCC backup tasks about duplicate devices having the same unique identifier. This problem appears to be specific to some Western Digital enclosures and occurs primarily on macOS Sierra, though we have seen one report on OS X 10.11.6.
  • Fixed a cosmetic issue in which the "time elapsed" value noted in CCC's Task Plan was errantly longer than the actual elapsed time.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would fail to validate a NAS volume at the beginning of a backup task if the NAS credentials username contains an "@" character.
  • macOS Sierra's Finder obstinately refuses to remove system items protected with System Integrity Protection flags even when those items reside on an external volume (and are thus not actually protected). This version of CCC adds a "Delete a SafetyNet Folder" option to CCC's Help menu to help people that want to manually remove items from CCC's SafetyNet folder. Please note that CCC's automated pruning of the SafetyNet folder is unaffected by this Finder-specific matter. CCC will continue to automatically manage the SafetyNet without any additional effort on your part. This new feature is entirely for people that want to manually remove system file-containing folders from the SafetyNet.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would ask for authentication credentials for a NAS volume (e.g. when selecting it as a source or destination) despite that CCC already had the credentials for another sharepoint on the same NAS device.
  • Addressed an edge-case scenario in which CCC would report that it was unable to locate the source or destination root folder on a NAS volume when that NAS volume had been mounted by the logged-in user (vs. mounted by CCC at the beginning of the task).
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would report that it lacked a password for the email notifications account if the username for that account contained a "/" character.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.10

September 16, 2016

  • CCC 4.1.10 is officially qualified on macOS Sierra. This update includes non-Sierra-specific changes and is recommended for all CCC 4 users.
  • Developed a workaround for a bug in macOS Sierra in which FileVault could not be enabled on the destination volume.
  • To accommodate changes in macOS Sierra, CCC now creates RSA key pairs for use with the Remote Macintosh option. If you create a new Authentication Credentials Installer Package (ACIP) with this version of CCC, CCC will replace an existing DSA-based key pair on the local Mac. As a result, you must (re)install the ACIP on all remote Macs that you currently have configured in your backup tasks.
  • Tasks listed in the postflight task popup menu are now sorted alphabetically.
  • Fixed an issue in which creating an empty custom filter would cause the Filters window to misbehave.
  • Apple relaxed some restrictions on sparsebundle disk images in macOS Sierra. On these systems, CCC now allows creating and mounting sparsebundle disk images on SMB sharepoints.
  • Fixed a logic issue that would cause the "Reset" button to not be displayed when a mounted-disk-image-on-NAS task failed because CCC lacked credentials to mount the underlying NAS volume.
  • This update to CCC will migrate CCC's keychain file from the user home folder to a global location. Among other issues, this resolves issues where folks couldn't update the password for a NAS volume associated with a particular task if that task was created while logged in to some other user account. That was an esoteric issue that doesn't seem like it should happen a lot, but the number of reports gave us the impetus to address the matter once and for all.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.9

June 14, 2016

  • If a backup task was configured to back up the startup disk, but the user had excluded system files from the backup task, CCC would avoid recreating startup caches on the destination. CCC logged this uninteresting non-event, but the logging of that event was causing a crash. That crash occurred at the very end of a usually-successful backup task, but resulted in a task history event not being recorded. We fixed that crasher.
  • CCC 4.1.8 raises a configuration concern if the destination is a USB device larger than 2TB. This update addresses an issue in which CCC would raise that concern for USB devices larger than 2GB.
  • CCC will now unmount (with force, if necessary) the Recovery HD associated with the source volume before attempting to create an archive of that volume. This addresses an issue in which various third-party utilities (especially Antivirus software) would dissent an ordinary unmount request, causing the attempt to archive the Recovery HD to fail.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.8

June 6, 2016

  • CCC will now proactively seek out case conflicts on the destination when the source is a case-sensitive volume and the destination is not. When case conflicts occur in filenames, CCC will append a randomized suffix to the conflicting files on the destination (but all files will be copied). When a case conflict occurs in a folder name, the conflicting folder will not be copied. In every case, CCC will report case conflicts at the end of the backup task and offer advice for resolving the issue.
  • Some network volumes incorrectly report themselves as case-insensitive despite being backed by a case-sensitive volume. CCC now tests for case-sensitivity on network volumes rather than trusting the value that is reported in their volume attributes. With this change, CCC can now report potential case-conflict scenarios more consistently to the user when configuring a backup task.
  • Made some improvements to SMTP account importing from the Internet Accounts database (El Capitan only). Also added an "Edit" button next to the SMTP account popup menu to make it more obvious how to edit those settings.
  • Made some improvements to the presentation of Gmail authentication failures. CCC will now walk the user through the process of creating Gmail app passwords when two-step verification is enabled on the user's Gmail account.
  • Added new task history status icons that should be easier to distinguish for users with color vision deficiency.
  • Added an "Always show progress window" option to the CCC menubar application menu. That option will always be available now, and closing the mini task progress window will not change that setting.
  • Fixed an issue in which the mini task progress window would never be visible if the user had checked the "Hide" button next to CCC User Agent in the Login Items tab of the Users and Groups Preference Pane.
  • CCC's privileged helper tool will now dissent a request to unmount a volume if it is currently removing a SafetyNet folder from that volume.
  • The free space threshold for deciding whether to compact a sparse disk image is now 25GB or 15% of the capacity of the destination, whichever is larger.
  • CCC will wait longer for a preflight disk image compaction task to complete to accommodate slower destination volumes.
  • You should never move an application (e.g. from your Downloads folder to the Applications folder) while that application is open. Previously, doing so with CCC could cause it to crash. CCC will now detect if the CCC application file has been moved while CCC is open. If the selected task has unsaved changes, CCC will automatically move the application back to its original location. If that fails, or if there are no unsaved changes, CCC will present a dialog, then quit and reopen itself from the new location.
  • Made some improvements to the auto-dismissal of the task finished overlay that's presented within the Task Plan when the selected task has completed. In some cases, that information would be presented, then revoked before the user had a chance to read it. Now it will remain until dismissed.
  • The CCC command-line application now has an option to print the task history in CSV format.
  • The CCC command-line application can now be invoked to send CCC-badged notifications from a shell script.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would errantly unmount a FUSE volume at the end of the task if it was mounted with the allow_root flag and mounted by the root user (e.g. with "sudo").
  • Addressed an issue in which the reminder associated with tasks configured to run on reconnect could be presented earlier than expected.
  • The options to not report an error when the source/destination is missing and to run the task as soon as the missing volume reappears were not previously available to tasks configured to run "Manually when I click the Clone button". That was appropriate, except in one case — when that task was invoked via task chaining. Now those options are made available to manual tasks, but only when those tasks are called via task chaining.
  • Added a "Task Configuration" token to the Email Template.
  • Improved error handling if errors occur during the attempt to mount a disk image when choosing "Restore from disk image" from CCC's Source selector.
  • An exit status of 104 will now cause the global preflight script to cancel the backup task and avoid recording a task history event.
  • /.quota.group and /.quota.user are now excluded from the backup task because changing those items on the destination causes the kernel to dissent unmount requests.
  • Fixed an issue in which the user could modify a task in CCC, then run the task via the CCC menubar application (which is a separate application from CCC). The task would run with the old settings, though the editor would present UI that suggests that the task is running with the new settings. Now if the user tries to run a task in the edit state via the menubar application, the menubar application will refuse to start the task, present a dialog indicating that the task is being edited, and will then open CCC.
  • Fixed a window resizing anomaly that could cause the source selector to be inaccessible.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.7

February 2, 2016

  • Fixed a user interface issue affecting Yosemite users, and only the German, Spanish, and Italian localizations in which the progress bar in the mini progress window would occasionally disappear.
  • System items placed in CCC's SafetyNet folder will no longer be impossible to remove when booted from the backup volume (only affects El Capitan users).
  • Addressed an issue in which CCC could crash on launch immediately after applying a CCC update.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the backup task to fail with a message asking the user to report the problem.
  • Fixed an issue in which the file flags on some system files were not getting preserved when using the "Find and replace corrupted files" option.
  • Addressed a scenario in which CCC's email notification would not report the destination volume's stats despite the destination being available during the backup task.
  • Fixed an issue in which sparse disk image compaction would fail if the disk image was encrypted.
  • Addressed an issue in which CCC would errantly report that it was unable to unmount the destination volume.
  • Implemented a better workaround for the DiskArbitration service being unready to mount a just-unlocked CoreStorage volume. Rather than applying a delay before trying to mount the volume, CCC will now attempt to mount the volume immediately (which works in most cases). If that mount attempt fails, CCC will impose a 15 second delay, then attempt to mount the CoreStorage volume again.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.6

December 3, 2015

  • Fixed a crashing bug introduced in 4.1.5 that would occur when trying to select a folder or disk image on a network volume as the destination to a task.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.5

December 2, 2015

  • If a backup task is configured to unmount the destination volume at the end of the backup task, and Spotlight dissents the unmount request, CCC will unmount the destination with more deliberation to overcome the Spotlight dissent. This change should go a long way towards addressing problems with being unable to eject the destination volume after a backup task runs, an issue that has become especially problemetic on El Capitan due to Spotlight interference.
  • Resolved a hang caused by new behavior introduced in the 10.11.1 security update. Starting with 10.11.1, attempting to click on the "Allow" or "Always Allow" buttons when prompted to give access to a keychain item will fail if you are accessing the system via screen sharing. CCC now detects whether the event was initiated via a "virtual click", and in those cases will avoid asking for access to an item in your login keychain.
  • When prompting for a NAS volume password, CCC now accepts a blank password (after a confirmation prompt).
  • El Capitan Finder adds some extended attributes to files while they are being copied by the Finder. In some odd cases, the Finder fails to remove those extended attributes after the copy has completed, and these extended attributes occasionally cause errors when CCC tries to preserve them. CCC no longer tries to preserve these errant extended attributes.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the backup task to fail with a message asking the user to report the problem.
  • On some El Capitan systems, the disk arbitration service is not ready to mount an encrypted volume immediately after it is unlocked. This build extends the delay that CCC imposes to work around this same bug that was discovered on Yosemite, and has only gotten worse (rdar://18910971 for anyone that has access and influence). Auto-mounting an encrypted destination should work more reliably now.
  • Added a workaround for enfs filesystem volumes that don't populate the disk arbitration attribute for a volume name, causing them to be named Untitled in CCC's interface.
  • The search criteria popup menus in the Task History window are now sorted.
  • CCC's User Agent will now revoke Task Started notifications when the corresponding Task Finished notification for that task is sent. This avoids having two notifications per task. Especially for users that prefer to have CCC notifications presented as Alerts, this will reduce some redundancy and free up some screen real estate.
  • CCC's user agent is now more proactive about pointing out automated tasks that have been suspended because the system is booted from a different startup disk.
  • Addressed an uncommon race condition in which having CCC load on login could lead to two copies of the CCC menubar application being present.
  • Applied an exception handler to work around an El Capitan bug that could occasionally lead to crashes on launch.
  • Paragon NTFS drivers occasionally add a NULL character to the end of their volume names. This makes it through to the interface as a control character (^@) on Mavericks and is otherwise harmless. On Yosemite, a text view will cause the application to hang if the "NSTextShowsControlCharacters" global default is set. This was an uncommon scenario, so we didn't see this problem frequently. On El Capitan, a text view (i.e. the Task Plan text view) causes a hang whether that global setting is applied or not. The result is that CCC will hang when a task is selected that references a Paragon NTFS volume. This update tediously detects and removes these rogue NULL characters before attempting to display a volume name in the Task Plan.
  • CCC will no longer report SoftRAID volumes as "not bootable" due to a partitioning problem.
  • Improved handling of Keychain write errors when a task is being edited by a user other than the user that created it.
  • Task completion notifications offer a bit more granularity on what constitutes "finishing" the task. If a task had more than just transfer errors, we now just say that it failed. This is more appropriate in cases where, for example, the task couldn't proceed at all because the destination was unavailable.
  • Ancillary errors (failures that don't affect data backup, e.g. a failure to send an email notification) are now raised to the user's attention, but in a more subtle manner than for transfer-related errors.
  • CCC will now attempt to compact a destination sparse disk image if the underlying destination volume has less than 25GB of free space at the beginning of the backup task. This threshold cannot be modified in the user interface (yet), please open a support request if this threshold is too conservative.
  • El Capitan paragraph spacing is almost twice that of Yosemite. Made a small change to how the Task Plan text is formatted on El Capitan to improve the space usage of that text view.
  • When looking for Recovery HD sources, CCC will now correctly locate Recovery HD archive files that reside on CoreStorage volumes.
  • CCC's scheduled task manager now subscribes to "system clock changed" notifications. If the system clock is automatically adjusted, CCC will now reschedule its task timers to accommodate the change. Normally auto adjustments are made on the scale of a few seconds and those changes are unimportant. We have discovered a few cases, however, where larger changes can occur (unrelated to time zone changes, which are handled differently) that can lead to tasks running much earlier or later than expected.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.4

September 1, 2015

  • This update is qualified on OS X El Capitan.
  • Fixed an issue that would lead CCC to report that its private keychain is not writable when the keychain had not yet been created.
  • CCC will no longer allow running another task as a postflight task if the secondary task is disabled.
  • SMTP usernames that contain special characters (e.g. "%") are now accommodated.
  • The user agent is no longer re-launched after changing the Show CCC icon in menubar preference. Especially on OS X 10.11, application launch time can be slow and this delay could lead to scenarios in which the preference became out of sync (e.g. if the user were to change that setting very rapidly).
  • Addressed a regression in which CCC occasionally could not skip past unreadable files.
  • Updated the procedure used to clone the Recovery HD volume to avoid an error at the end of the task that was specific to El Capitan.
  • Fixed a UI anomally in which the task name field was difficult to edit when another task was running.
  • Fixed an issue in which some UI elements in the Scheduler popover appeared to be disabled (but were not) on Yosemite and El Capitan.
  • Fixed an issue in which the "Submit Logs" button in CCC's Help window was inaccessible in non-English localizations.
  • Fixed a time zone adjustment issue for cases where a task was created in one time zone but then initially scheduled in another time zone.
  • When CCC encounters multiple volumes with the same unique identifier, it now presents the names of those volumes when reporting the problem. This should make it easier to resolve this esoteric issue.
  • When disabling the SafetyNet, CCC now asks the user if he would like to delete the SafetyNet folder on the destination. This will help avoid some cases of the task failing due to the destination being full.
  • Fixed an issue specific to El Capitan in which debug output spewed by Apple's hdiutil utility would be interpreted as errors and cause a disk image creation or mount task to fail.
  • Added custom VoiceOver descriptions for the task status images in the Task History window.
  • Added a global exclude for the special hidden .Transporter Library folder. This proprietary device from Connected Data was causing backup tasks to stall due to a bug in the OSXFUSE code that supports that device.
  • Fixed an issue in which the reminder timer associated with an "On Reconnect" task wasn't getting removed when the task was switched to ad hoc.
  • Added a workaround for fuse4x filesystems that don't advertise support for files larger than 4GB.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.3

May 19, 2015

  • Addressed an issue in which CCC would fail to send an email notification at the end of a backup task, and subsequently fail to record the task event in Task History.
  • Time Zone changes that do not have a net effect on the wall time will no longer cause a task to be rescheduled. Additionally, tasks scheduled to run on an hourly basis will no longer be rescheduled to the original hour start time (vs. the next hourly run time adjusted for the time zone change) when a time zone change occurs.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.2

May 6, 2015

  • Addressed an issue in which the Preferences window would not open for people using non-English locales.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.1

May 5, 2015

  • If you have a pair of folders selected as the source and destination, CCC no longer refuses to allow the user to choose the destination folder as the source (or vice versa). The user is probably swapping the two folders, so instead of preventing this, CCC clears out the opposing settings that would be in conflict.
  • Fixed a minor issue with the Uninstall functionality.
  • The mini task progress window is now closed when no tasks are running, rather than being made transparent. The previous behavior was intended to avoid a bug in Yosemite in which the user agent application would hang if the window was closed while the display was dimmed. The behavior had the annoying result of creating an unclickable rectangle on the Desktop. We found another way to work around the Yosemite bug that allows us to close the window properly.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC's helper tool was not saving the global preferences to disk after getting a new application path from CCC. This would result in tasks being unable to run after restarting, because the helper tool would have an invalid path for the CCC application bundle.
  • Addressed a few minor clipping or translation issues in some of the non-English localization resources.
  • The "Don't validate certificate chain" option in the Email Settings section of CCC's Preferences window will now be properly retained.
  • Fixed a cosmetic issue in which the path control interface element wasn't getting updated when choosing a new disk image as the destination. The result would be "Macintosh HD > Applications" being indicated as the destination, which could be confusing.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1

April 28, 2015

  • Added a new task progress window to the CCC User Agent application. You can now choose to display this miniature task progress window by choosing "Show task progress for CCC Backup Task" from the menubar application's menu. This window can automatically appear when tasks start and disappear when tasks complete. The window will show task progress for every task, allowing you to get detailed task progress information without having the main CCC application window open.
  • The task configuration portion of the CCC window can now be resized horizontally to make file selection easier when cloning selected files.
  • Added a "Simple Mode" in which CCC's interface is limited to the source and destination selectors and the Clone button. For people that want to use CCC only on an ad hoc basis (i.e. not for scheduling tasks), and want only the basic functionality of cloning one local disk to another local disk, Simple Mode delivers that experience. Simple Mode is accessed via the Carbon Copy Cloner menu.
  • Addressed several accessibility concerns. All CCC user interface elements should now be accessible via keyboard navigation and with VoiceOver.
  • The task list now has a contextual menu, with options to run, disable, duplicate or delete the clicked-upon task.
  • Tasks can be disabled globally from the CCC menubar icon. Tasks can be disabled until the user specifically re-enables them, or automatically re-enabled after a particular period of time.
  • User Agent and helper tool behavior improvements. If there are no automated or scheduled tasks configured to run, and if both CCC and its user agent have exited, CCC's helper tool will exit automatically. Likewise, the user agent will remain open only if there are automated tasks configured, or if the user has CCC configured to display its icon in the menu bar. The CCC User Agent login item is now exposed in the Login Items section of the Users & Groups preference pane, and this can be removed by the user (as well as in CCC's Preferences window). The services that are affected by disabling CCC's user agent are clearly explained in CCC's preferences window.
  • If the user declines saving a password for an encrypted volume in CCC's keychain, CCC will no longer ask the user for the password to that same volume in the future. The user will still have the opportunity to save that volume's password in CCC's keychain if, for example, the task fails to run because the encrypted volume was not unlocked, and CCC was unable to unlock it.
  • When a custom filter item is modified, CCC will now properly indicate that the task needs to be saved.
  • When dozens of volumes are present, CCC will now present these volumes in a scrollable list in the source and destination selectors.
  • In addition to each of the days in a week, "Day of the Month" is now an option when configuring monthly tasks. This allows the user to schedule a task to run "On the first day of the month" or "On the last day of the month".
  • SMTP accounts that are configured in Mail are now available in CCC's Email Settings preferences to simplify the setup of email settings.
  • CCC's Documentation window now offers an option to find text in the current page.
  • Fixed an edge-case issue in which sending an email could lead to a crash if the SMTP server stopped responding. Affected tasks would have completed successfully, but the email notification would not be delivered, and this also prevented a task history event from being recorded.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0.6

February 5, 2015

  • The Import button is now correctly disabled if the Task Migration panel is presented with no tasks enabled for import.
  • Addressed a race condition that could occasionally lead to a Recovery HD volume remaining mounted, which could lead to a dialog upon ejecting an external disk indicating that the disk contains multiple volumes. This was harmless, but could be confusing.
  • Fixed a bug in which the notice that a task is suspended would be presented detached from the main window. When overlooked (which is easy to do because the panel is obscured by the main window), CCC would be unable to activate or delete suspended tasks.
  • Fixed an issue in which excluding a file or folder that had a newline character in its name would cause a backup task to fail.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0.5

January 22, 2015

  • This update addresses a minor bug introduced in 4.0.4 that would cause the "New disk image" option in the Destination selector to fail to produce the New disk image panel on Mountain Lion systems.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0.4

January 21, 2015

  • CCC now makes a special accommodation for specifying a DiskWarrior Preview volume as the source to a backup task.
  • CCC now handles cases where the user or an external utility (e.g. "CleanMyMac") deletes the folder where CCC stores task configuration files while CCC is running. Previously this caused CCC to report that it was unable to save tasks (which would be resolved after restarting), now CCC will recreate the folder immediately, then save the task.
  • Fixed an issue that occurred when multiple tasks started simultaneously and attempted to retrieve an item from CCC's private keychain. Previously, only one of the tasks would succeed, the others would report that they were unable to retrieve the keychain item, or that they were unable to mount the destination volume (for example).
  • Fixed a UI anomaly that would occur in the sidebar when resizing the window.
  • Fixed an issue in which the main window's user interface elements would not load properly on some Mountain Lion systems.
  • Fixed an issue in which custom filters associated with a task that had a remote Macintosh specified as the source would be lost after the initial import (e.g. from a CCC 3.5 task). Also fixed an issue in which this same task would constantly be marked "dirty" when the task was selected, despite making no changes to it.
  • Made a minor adjustment to how a Recovery HD volume is created that should avoid a bug in Disk Utility when attempting to make future partition changes to that disk.
  • CCC will now unlock the root destination folder if it is locked (rather than report an error that the destination cannot be written to).
  • Addressed a compatibility issue with some OS X FUSE volumes (e.g. BoxCryptor).
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would report that a source Xsan volume was not available after that volume had been unmounted and remounted.
  • Implemented a workaround to an OS X Yosemite bug in which the height of a Save or Open panel (e.g. the panel presented when you choose "Choose a Folder" or "Choose a disk image" or "New disk image") grows by 22 pixels every time it is opened. This growth, when unchecked, would eventually cause the panel to grow past the bottom of the screen, making some buttons inaccessible.
  • Addressed an edge case in which the Recovery HD OS version was not collected for some Recovery HD volumes when opening CCC.
  • If a task is missed because the source or destination is missing, and the task is configured to run when the missing volume reappears, the state information that indicates that a run time was missed due to a missing volume is now stored persistently. Previously this information was lost when CCC's helper tool was reloaded, e.g. after restarting, or after updating CCC, which would result in a task getting skipped.
  • If a laptop's AC power is restored while the system is sleeping, this power state change is now detected more reliably on wake. Previously, CCC relied on the power state change notification to run tasks that were waiting for AC power to be restored. If that state change occurred during sleep, CCC would have missed the notification and errantly reported that a task was "waiting for AC power to be restored", even though AC power was available.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0.3

November 24, 2014

  • In some cases, OS X Yosemite's Service Management daemon crashes while attempting to install CCC's helper tool. In other cases, the Service Management daemon fails to cope with a corrupted system folder, and this also leads to a failure installing CCC's helper tool. This update works around both of these OS X bugs.
  • OS X Yosemite's Finder has a bug in which mounted disk image volumes will appear to remain mounted after CCC has successfully unmounted them. Finder will remove these "ghost" icons if you double-click them, but this update works around this Finder bug by mounting disk images with a flag that prevents the disk image from being browsable in the Finder.
  • There is a bug in OS X Yosemite's diskutil command-line utility in which it will unlock and attach a FileVault-protected volume, but not mount that volume. This contradicts past behavior as well as the documentation for this utility. This update offers a workaround to this OS X Yosemite bug.
  • When OS X Yosemite is first started up, the console owner is sometimes an undefined user (and not the root user). This dubious ownership affected CCC's postflight power management options (restart and shutdown). This update now recognizes this dubious ownership and applies the power management action more effectively.
  • Added a new option to the scheduling selector that allows finer-grained control over the handling of a task when the source or destination is missing. You can now suppress errors and still have the task run when the missing volume reappears.
  • Added a troubleshooting option, "Don't preserve extended attributes". This new option can be leveraged when dealing with Synology DiskStation performance issues that occur when trying to retrieve extended attributes from files on the DiskStation.
  • The notification that is sent to NotificationCenter when the source or destination volume is missing has been improved. If the user has not deselected the option to "Run as soon as the missing volume reappears," the notification will ask the user to attach the missing volume to proceed. This is only applicable to cases where the source or destination is a local volume. If the affected item is a folder or is a network volume, we assume that other errors occurred beyond "volume is not attached" so the notification will still indicate than an error occurred.
  • Fixed an issue in which the path to the CCC private keychain was incorrectly imported in cases where a CCC 3.5 task had been created by a user account other than the currently-logged-in user.
  • The "Use strict volume identification" control is no longer disabled for ad hoc tasks.
  • The Task Plan now properly reflects the task "next run time" when a time zone shift has occurred.
  • Warnings that the Recovery HD is out of date are no longer improperly presented to non-admin users.
  • Fixed a condition in which the user agent would present a prompt to run a task before it had obtained the details of the task (such as task name) from CCC's helper tool.
  • CCC now obtains a sleep assertion that will keep the system awake during Dark Wake. In particular, this will avoid tasks running while the system is in and out of sleep (which is harmless, though makes it look like the task is taking longer than it actually is), and will also avoid the error "The backup task was aborted because the destination volume is on transient storage, and the system went to sleep."
  • Backup tasks configured to run on a monthly basis can now be configured to start on a date in the future.
  • Fixed an issue in which a scheduled task would fail to run because the system woke (or was powered on) a bit earlier than expected.
  • BitCasa volumes mounted via OSXFUSE do not advertise support for files larger than 4GB, so CCC was refusing to attempt to copy files larger than 4GB to these volumes. Apparently these volumes do actually support large files, so this update implements a workaround for this non-standard volume behavior.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC could hang on launch if 64 or more volumes were mounted.
  • Fixed a bug in which CCC was errantly loading corrupted copies of task configuration files (e.g. that resulted from previous failed attempts to save the tasks).
  • Fixed a bug in which CCC was referencing the wrong unique identifier when storing the passphrase for an encrypted disk image in some edge cases. This would lead to CCC failing to mount the disk image and prompting the user to re-enter the passphrase.
  • The sanity checks that prevent a task from writing to a growable disk image on the startup disk are now avoided in cases where the disk usage of the source cannot be accurately determined.
  • Several non-error concerns are now suppressed from being presented as errors in the Task History window.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC's Recovery HD archive was not getting updated when the source was updated to 10.10.
  • System files are no longer excluded by default from remote Macintosh sources.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would not prune the contents of the _CCC SafetyNet folder after it had been renamed from "_CCC Archives". This is a one-time occurrence, but in some cases users encountered a "Destination is full" message on this initial backup.
  • Some network filesystems have a rogue "hidden" flag on the root folder of the sharepoint. While Finder manages to ignore that flag, it is still preserved when copying files from that sharepoint with CCC. This would lead to the destination folder being invisible. This update strips any such rogue "hidden" flag from the destination root folder at the end of the backup task.
  • Fixed an issue in which an error that should have been ignored will cause the menubar application to display an alert icon when the user agent application is reloaded.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would occasionally crash if a slow network volume was present. This crash did not affect the operation of backup tasks, but was nevertheless annoying if the user was trying to modify a backup task.
  • Command+Option+Q will now quit CCC as well as the privileged helper tool and user agent. The helper tool and user agent consume nearly no resources when idle, and they are required for the performance of scheduled tasks. This is a convenience for people that do not wish to configure CCC tasks to run automatically.
  • The hidden NetBoot sharepoint hint files are now excluded by default. This avoids having the backup volume appear as an ad hoc NetBoot sharepoint when that volume is mounted, and also avoids the file sharing service preventing its unmount.
  • Fixed the checkbox that controls whether CCC automatically checks for software updates.
  • Fixed an edge case scenario in which CCC was unable to store SMTP credentials when logged in to a different user account than what was used to originally specify the credentials.
  • The "AvidUnityISIS" filesystem does not advertise support for files larger than 4GB, so CCC was refusing to attempt to copy files larger than 4GB to these volumes. Apparently these volumes do actually support large files, so this update implements a workaround for this non-standard volume behavior.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would not copy some items from a data-only volume to a network volume if those items had names that are the same as OS X system folders.
  • Fixed an issue in which ##et_source_name## was not getting replaced in email notifications when the source was a folder on a missing volume.
  • Fixed an issue in which the task would appear to not be proceeding when copying files to some network volumes.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0.2

October 17, 2014

  • Email account settings are now imported when importing a CCC 3.5 task that was configured to send emails.
  • Tasks created by CCC 3.5 through 3.5.2 are now imported (previously they were not recognized as migrate-able tasks).
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would errantly report that an error occurred while trying to set a global default.
  • Fixed an issue in which the CCC application window would be moved from a secondary display to the primary display when revealing the sidebar.
  • The CCC window position is now restored correctly in cases where the sidebar is hidden by default.
  • Errors that occur while establishing a secure connection to an SMTP server are now reported with better advice when sending a test email.
  • Fixed an issue specific to the German localization in which the "day" option for checking for CCC application updates would not "stick".
  • Fixed numerous UI behavior annoyances.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC would occasionally report that a Recovery HD volume was out of date or missing when it actually was not.
  • There were a few places that the "Use strict volume identification" setting was not getting respected, and in those cases CCC would errantly report that the destination volume was unavailable. These should all be resolved now.
  • When the "Don't delete anything" Advanced SafetyNet option is specified, older versions of modified items are not deleted, they are moved to the SafetyNet. SafetyNet pruning is now available for tasks configured with this option.
  • Clicking on the "Find and replace corrupted files" button will now reveal a dialog informing the user of that option’s performance implications.
  • If the user is logged in as a non-admin, the Recovery HD is now properly presented as "<OS version unavailable>", rather than "No Recovery HD". Recovery HD volumes can only be mounted when the logged-in user is an administrator.
  • CCC will more effectively keep the system awake when a task is running on a system that is running on battery power. Note that, by default, CCC tasks will not start if the system is running on battery power.
  • CCC now attempts to repair the ownership of its private keychain. This should deal with some edge cases in which the keychain's ownership is set to the root user.
  • Some ZFS volumes not only lack a UUID, but also have an underlying physical device with an identical volume name. This poses a problem for CCC when attempting to positively identify a ZFS destination volume. We have implemented a workaround in which the unmounted volume will be ignored, however this makes it impossible for CCC to pre-mount a ZFS volume that is attached, but not mounted. We're not happy with this workaround, and it can be avoided if the ZFS filesystem implementation is improved to add a volume UUID to each logical volume.
  • Fixed an issue in which "##et_destination_name##" was appearing in task notification emails.
  • Fixed an issue in which the Authentication Credentials Installer Package would fail to install, asking the user to report the issue to the Software manufacturer.
  • Numerous improvements to the CCC command-line utility.
  • Resolved some minor issues that led to crashes.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4.0

October 1, 2014

  • Completely redesigned CCC's interface and architecture.
  • The functionality of the main task configuration window and the scheduled tasks window have been consolidated. Tasks can be saved, scheduled, and edited, all in the same window.
  • Configuring a backup task is far simpler -- complex settings are hidden by default, but accessible at the click of a button. The sidebar and toolbar can be hidden or revealed to control the number of options presented at once.
  • Menubar application for quick access to information about CCC backup tasks
  • Progress indication is no longer presented in a window that can't be minimized or managed like the rest of your windows. Instead, the menubar application icon changes to indicate that a task is running, and a simple progress indicator next to each task indicates how far along it is.
  • Tasks can be chained together to form more complex backup routines
  • New runtime conditions offer more control over when and how scheduled tasks run
  • A Task History window will indicate details about when a task ran and whether it was successful. All history events are listed in one window, and can be sorted by task name, source/destination name, start time, and status.
  • Configuring email account settings is now down in a centralized location. Test email notifications are now much more proactive about reporting configuration errors.
  • Email notifications can be customized. A template is offered in CCC's preferences that can be customized to include runtime variables (e.g. task name, source/destination name, data copied, errors reported, etc.).
  • The interface for specifying custom filters is greatly simplified. Filters are now explicitly retained per-task, and can easily be modified at a later time.
  • Custom filters can be reordered.
  • The "Disk Center" has been incorporated into the main window as well, offering details of locally mounted volumes such as disk usage, encryption status, presence of a recovery HD, and current read and write data rates.
  • The Disk Center simplifies the presentation of read and write error statistics collected by OS X's IOKit Storage Driver.
  • The Disk Center now lists tasks associated with each volume, along with relevant task state (e.g. last run date, last run status). Simply double-click a task to switch to the task view, or click the Clone button right in the Disk Center to run the associated task immediately.
  • A command-line application is now included that allows you to start, stop, and watch the progress of your CCC backup tasks.
  • A task migration assistant will help you migrate your CCC 3.5.x tasks to CCC 4.0
  • Authentication is no longer required every time you want to run a task. CCC will require authentication once for an administrative user, and then that user will have one-click access to starting, stopping, and configuring tasks. Non-administrative users will be required to authenticate with administrator credentials to start, stop, or modify CCC backup tasks.

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