I find hourly backups to be very intrusive. If I did decide to do hourly backups, I might choose to back up a smaller subset of files (e.g. vs. the entire filesystem) so the backups occur very quickly. Otherwise, I'd just set the system to back up when I'm not using the system. My production machine backs up once a day at 5:30.
FileVault protects the contents of your home directory by enclosing it in an encrypted disk image. When you log in, the encrypted disk image is unlocked via your login and password and mounted for use as your home directory. Mounted disk images pose an interesting problem to incremental backup utilities. By simply being mounted and accessed (e.g. via browsing the contents), the content of a disk image, and thus the disk image file itself, is modified.
We're happy to help you troubleshoot your bootability problems. Before you ask for help, please try the troubleshooting steps below. If you're having trouble with the steps or have run out of options, please let us know how far you got, or how far your Mac gets into the boot process.
If CCC's Cloning Coach didn't report any configuration concerns for your backup volume and you are having trouble booting from it, try the following troubleshooting steps (in order):
Many factors can affect the performance and outcome of a backup task. One of the things that we have found particularly helpful for identifying performance problems, for example, is to have disk activity statistics available during a backup. CCC's Disk Center provides this kind of statistics monitoring, as well as general volume information for each locally-attached volume mounted on your Mac. Choose "Disk Center" from CCC's Window menu to view the Disk Center.
CCC determines whether your destination volume will be bootable and indicates any configuration concerns in the "Cloning Coach" window. If you see a yellow warning icon next to the "Customize these settings" button, you can click on that icon to see these concerns. CCC will also present these concerns to you the first time that you back up to any particular destination volume.
There is no end to the number of hardware and filesystem problems that could affect your Mac's hard drives. Filesystem and media corruption are commonplace, and now CCC delivers expert advice to you when the errors occur. The Cloning Coach is a window that will appear at the end of a backup task if "transfer errors" occurred during that backup task. Transfer errors are errors that affect individual files or folders and not the backup task as a whole.
