I use the latest version of SuperDuper to make a clone. The clone is located in a Mercury enclosure on a Hitachi DeskStar 2 TB drive. After upgrading from Yosemite to El Capitan, the clone will not boot (although this may be coincidental). I contacted Dave Nanian at Shirt Pocket (the developer of SuperDuper) and he has not seen this issue with El Capitan. He had me try the following (all unsuccessful):

1. Erase the clone and re-clone from scratch.
2. Run Smart Update from SuperDuper.

The clone did boot, once, after running Repair Disk via Disk Utility but I think that that was coincidence. Disk Warrior reports minor issues (incorrect root correction date and repair of a custom flag for ScamZapper) but I have not run DW on the clone after re-doing the clone.

I have the enclosure connected via Thunderbolt. I tried reconnecting via USB 3 but that was unsuccessful.

At this point, I think that the problem may lie with either the enclosure or the hard drive. I feel that the hard drive is unlikely as the source of the issue because it is checked daily by Check Mate, with no problems found (file structure test, SMART, surface scan). Is there any way to test the enclosure?

Any thoughts?

ADDENDUM: When attempting to boot fro the clone, the progress bar goes about half way, stops, and the computer spontaneously shuts down.

I realize this is not helpful, but I too have had problems making bootable clones of El Capitan since OS X 10.11 beta 1 using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. I have no clue why that may be happening. Since Time Machine started working again with OS X 10.11.2 beta 3 I haven't bothered to follow it up any further.

I am an earlier OS (10.8.5), but my Super Duper backup is also on a Hitachi drive in an OWC Mercury enclosure (320GB HGST Travelstar Z7K320 2.5-inch 7mm SATA), although I am connected by Firewire 800.

Your post got me to check how my Super Duper clone is working (SD 2.8 (v96)). Things did not go as I would have expected.

I shutdown and rebooted holding down the Option key. Instead of seeing my main drive icon and the SD clone icon, I had the main drive icon with another drive icon called 10.8.5 Recovery. I chose 10.8.5 Recovery.

This opened with a dialogue box offering four choices:

• Restore from Time Machine
• Reinstall OSX
• Get help online
• Disk Utility

Among the items on the menu bar was "Startup Disk". It offered either my main drive or the Super Duper clone. I chose the clone and it booted.

I then shutdown and rebooted with the Option key. This then gave me four startup disk icons:

• Main drive
• Recovery 10.8.5
• Super Duper clone
• Time Machine

Note: I have two Mercury enclosures (SD and Time Machine) but the TM enclosure is older (bought 2012). The SD enclosure was bought this year.

Update: I just checked "Startup Disk" in system preferences and it offers either the main drive or the SD clone.

The Recovery Drive you found is a feature added with the upgrade to OS X 10.8. The actual Recovery Drive is in a hidden volume/partition on the boot drive and performs the same functions previously found on the OS X Install Discs — when install discs were still available. By design, it does not appear as a bootable drive in System Preferences. Normally it is accessed by booting while holding down the ⌘R keys. If the Recovery Drive is damaged and your computer is connected to the internet it will boot the Recovery Drive from the internet.

I may wait until 10.11.2 is released before trying to make a bootable clone. I neglected to mention that Dave Nanian also suggested trying to boot the clone in Safe Mode; this was also unsuccessful.

I took the liberty of sending Dave a link to this thread and also a link to Data Rescue One review: Harvest data from a failing hard drive, which has a reference to Apple's making it more difficult to set up a bootable partition in 10.11.

When I receive a reply from Dave, I'll post it, if it has any relevant information.

I'd love to know what causes this. I used to be able to use Rsync to make a complete copy of an OS from scratch, and it would boot fine. But as of about 10.6 or 10.7, this was no longer the case. Rsync backups would not boot, for no apparent reason. The fix was to use Ditto for the initial copy. Then the drive could be updated without problems with Rsync. So there's something very subtle that isn't getting copied correctly with Rsync. I'd bet that's what's causing these other apps difficulty too.

I spent a bit of time trying to find what it was, or at least where it was, but ran out of patience. Even a split-half search takes a long time when you're talking about 500,000 files.

I have an internal drive with a clone of El Capitan made with the latest version of CCC. It boots fine.

I just made a clone from it to an external drive which I plugged into a USB2 port on the front of my Mac with a drive adapter cable. It worked fine.

I know the latest (paid for) version of CCC is the important thing. I've not used SuperDuper.

I have a clone of El Capitan that boots just fine that I made with the latest version of SuperDuper.

Dave Nanian made the following suggestion: "Power off the Mac. Disconnect the external completely. (No other peripherals save for mouse and keyboard - no hubs, etc.) Hold down Option and get to the boot screen. Then, attach the drive directly to your Mac (what drive is this, by the way?) and try to start up from it." It didn't work.

For the record, I'm using an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual with two 2 TB Hitachi DeskStar drives, configured independently (one for the clone, the other for Time Machine). I may contact OWC to describe the problem. As far as I can tell, the problem lies with an incompatibility between the enclosure and El Capitan, since everything was fine in Yosemite.

I have also been able to use the latest version of SuperDuper! to backup/clone both of my machines running OS 10.11.1 to external devices (I make two such backups/clones for each machine to two separate external drives). Each of those external drives have Seagate mechanisms, and I have been directly connecting via Firewire 800 to my late 2012 Mac Mini, and connecting from the Firewire ports to a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire 800 adapter for my mid 2013 13" MacBook Air. The clones boot up fine (although the bootup process is certainly no speed demon!).

Dave Nanian suggested that I put the cloned drive into a different enclosure and see what happens. I don't have an extra enclosure at the moment, but I will get one as soon as I have the time and try this.

I find this discussion ever so intriguing but utterly incomprehensible.
If necessary/advisable, I can post this in the "kindergarten" forum (New Users).
My only experience with external drives is the 1TB My Passport drive (with its own 'enclosure') which I use for Time Machine backup.

So:
• Why all these clones, bootable or not?
• What does an enclosure have to do with functionality?
• For that matter, what is an enclosure and why would it make a difference?
• What difference does a connection to an external drive have to do with anything?

In a nutshell (and not exhaustive):

- (Bootable) clones are independent and complete backups identical to the original that can be used when the regular boot drive malfunctions. Clones are an option to preserve important data and (when bootable) to limit downtime to that of a restart. For obvious reasons, having such clones located on separate hardware increases their usefulness.

- An enclosure is a box housing (currently mostly) sATA-interfaced devices like HDs, optical drives etc., fitted with a power supply and an interface board for ports like USB, FW, Thunderbolt etc. Usually you purchase enclosure plus enclosed mechanism together as a single unit. You might also use an enclosure to house an internal drive you replaced with a larger one. As any hardware item, enclosures may harbor problems separate from the items they enclose.

- Connections/ports (USB, FW, Thunderbolt, cables etc.) matter because they are independent and independently fallible, in addition to having different specs and foibles. Physically, connection issues can be anywhere in the entire chain from computer (buses, ports, controlling hardware etc.) via connecting cables to peripheral hardware (enclosure, sATA device and associated controller boards).

Standard troubleshooting techniques may localize problems to any of the items discussed here, as is the case with the enclosure in this thread.

Merci ... although I would think that a standard TM backup would be more than sufficient for such purposes.
But whatever gets you through the night, I suppose.

The disadvantage of a Time Machine backup is you can't boot directly into it.

I keep a bootable clone of my laptop. If my internal hard drive fails, I do not need to do anything except plug in the clone and reboot. Instantly, I'm back to work again, running entirely off the clone.

If I have only a TM backup, things get a bit trickier. I have to reformat (or replace, if it is a hardware failure) the internal drive, boot from the recovery partition, then restore the backup. Last time I did this, it took about 3 hours and 20 minutes. I work a lot, I travel a lot, and there are times when i can't afford three hours' downtime because of a problem. A bootable clone solves the issue, and I can backup to the clone when I sleep.

The main advantages of a backup/clone made with either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner are:

1. One can boot from the clone, and be back in business right away.

2. Since some (most?) folks do not have a robust disk maintenance/repair program like Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro, they need to rely on Disk Utility for trying to do repairs. While one can boot to the Recovery Partition (assuming it got created) to access Disk Utility, it is much faster to boot to the clone, and run Disk Utility from there.

3. If one has any of those more robust programs, for them to be effective on one's internal drive, they need to be booted externally. Again, having them on a clone accomplishes that.

4. Finally, one can do 1) a complete Erase, Format, and if necessary, Partition the internal drive from the clone, and then either 2) do a restore of the clone to the internal drive, or 2) install a fresh version of the OS, and 3) use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the non-Apple stuff to the internal drive.

To me, it is much, much faster (and simpler) that trying to do that from a Time Machine backup.

Regarding my post above about my SuperDuper! backups to external drives with Seagate mechanisms, about 2 years ago, I removed the slow, 5400 rpm 1 TB Hitachi drive from my late 2012 Mac Mini, installed a 256 gig Samsung 840 Pro in its place, and installed the Hitachi drive inside a nice, slim external case. That slim case works real well for me when I am traveling, as I take my 13" MacBook Air with me (only has a 250 gig SSD inside it). For that Hitachi drive, I have two partitions on it. One of those is for making a backup/clone of the SSD on the Air, and the other partition contains movies, TV series, and some other miscellaneous. This morning, I went ahead and did a SuperDuper! backup/clone on the Air to that external partition, and after it was done, I was able to boot my MacBook Air from it (slow bootup, especially considering 1) the drive spins at only 5400 rpm, and 2) it is via a USB 3.0 connection. The Seagate backups I mentioned above are 1) on 7200 rpm Seagate drives, and 2) the connection is via Firewire 800).

In addition, as someone posted somewhere on this site: count the number of backups you have (1 TM backup?), subtract 1 and that is the number of backups you really have.

Any piece of hardware can fail, but the chance of two or more failing simultaneously is much smaller. But then again, it is those small probabilities of which thrilling movies are made.

One thing breaking is Murphy's bread n' butter. Two simultaneous failures means it's personal.

Well said, and one would think so! Still, even with backing up to two separate external drives, I still am somewhat concerned. I do as much maintenance on my devices as I can. And, for over 99% of the time, the only time my external drives are being used is when I do my once a week backups.

I tried another enclosure and a different hard drive. Cloning with SuperDuper was successful but the clone still would not boot. I should be receiving a SSD in a few days and I'll try that, but I can't imagine why it should make a difference.

One more thing to try, and I'll post results when I get around to it, is to use a different cloning app. I'll probably try Carbon Copy Cloner.

Comments, anyone?

Have you ever sent your SD log to Nanian for examination?

Good idea, Artie. I just did it, so we'll see what he says.

Another suggestion, Jon... Take a look at CCC's MacUpdate page; there are two posts (by the same poster) that deal with CCC/El Cap that sound like they extend to SD, although I've got no idea if they extend to your situation.

Thanks again, Artie. I don't think that that situation applies to me but you never know... At any rate, someone suggested (in another forum) trying Backup Pro. I may give that a shot as well. I'll post back after I have some results.

Things have been chaotic around here lately (wife's cataract surgery on both eyes, two weeks apart, innumerable medical appointments) so I'll experiment when I have a little breather. BTW, the surgery went well and she is very pleased.

Been there, done that, happy to hear that all is well.

I had my left eye done when I was 53, but my right eye didn't need doing until I was 59, both of which were unusually young ages for the surgery, but WOW! what a difference after living with growing cataracts for three years each.

Edit: Is Get Backup Pro El Cap ready? The latest version on MacUpdate and your linked review are both dated Dec. 2014.

Read post #5 in this Techsurvivors forum. Apparently, it works in EC.

El Cap is so different from Yosemite that you'd think the app would require at least some updating, but let's see.

Edit: The dev's web page confirms El Cap ready.

Edit 2: There's a free Lite version that you may want to try. (Scroll down.)

He said that it wasn't helpful. He did suggest, however, that I try booting from the clone in verbose mode. The only problem is that I don't know what to look for when all those (incomprehensible) messages appear.

Can anyone enlighten me? V1 maybe? Any other experts out there?

I think you're looking for the last message before boot fails, but you may need to have your camera ready to record it.

I haven't tried verbose mode, but I did succeed in getting a clone to boot. I installed a SSD drive into my USB 3 dock and cloned, not with SuperDuper, but with Carbon Copy Cloner (trial version). The clone booted without incident. I'll tell Dave Nanian but I don't know what he'll make of it. Looks like I'm going to buy CCC.

I'm a happy (totally unaffiliated) CCC user, and I believe that Mike Bombich has done a better job of keeping on top of recent substantive changes in OS X than Dave Nanian has.

Edit: It seems to me, though, that there's a ganbustein post somewhere that favors SD.

Dave Nanian thinks that the SSD would have booted if I had used SD. I can't imagine why a SSD would boot in the USB 3 dock but a conventional HDD would not. Still, I'm going to experiment.

1. The trouble started after I upgraded from Yosemite to El Cap. I use a conventional HDD in a Thunderbolt - USB 3 enclosure. I will (when I have some time) erase that clone and re-clone with CCC.

2. I will also erase the SSD clone (made with CCC) and re-clone with SD.

When I have results, I'll post back.

BTW, I was impressed with CCC. I haven't used it for many years and I was particularly pleased that it creates a recovery partition, which SD does not. I haven't explored all its features but it looks good so far.

Unless I'm mistaken, SuperDuper has dropped from $40 to $28 since CCC went from donationware to $40.

Found it, but it concerns OS X Lion...too old to be pertinent.

It's $40 and worth the price.

I just did this and the clone booted without incident. I ran some tasks with it and all seems well. However, CCC reported that it had lost connection with the clone when it offered to make a recovery partition. This didn't happen with the SSD clone made with CCC.

I may or may not try this. Everything seems to be working so, if it isn't broken, I won't fix it.

Nope! For a while, now.


That sounds like you ought to report it. Mike Bombich is pretty good about responding.

I paid $40!

I used the dialog box that opened when I launched CCC. Oh well, win some, lose some. Some days you're the dog, some days you're the tree.

I will follow your suggestion about reporting this to Mike Bombich.

Update: Bombich Software sent instructions about resolving the recovery partition issue and linked me to Cloning Apple's Recovery HD partition. Problem solved!

I must say that I am very impressed with CCC, its interface, and its tech support.

The $28 price for SuperDuper! has been in effect for quite a while. I was originally using SuperDuper! in "demo/free" mode for a number of months, but about 5 or 6 months ago, I just went ahead and purchased it. The paid version certainly runs faster! (It also has some other features that I have not needed to use, so far).

Now, I had previously posted 1) my on going success with SuperDuper! (including working flawlessly with El Capitan (OS 10.11.1)), and 2) that SuperDuper! does not back up the Recovery Partition, whereas Carbon Copy Cloner does.

Regarding that Recovery Partition, with a SuperDuper! bootable backup, if a complete recovery is ever needed, after booting the SuperDuper! backup, there would be 2 ways to proceed:

1. Use Disk Utility to Erase and Format (and if necessary, partition) the drive with the issue. Then, use SuperDuper! to do a full restore of everything. The Recovery Partition would not be there.

2. Use Disk Utility to Erase and Format (and if necessary, partition) the drive with the issue. Then, so a fresh installation of the OS. Next, boot from that fresh installation, and use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the non-system stuff from the SuperSuper! backup. The Recovery Partition would be there.

For #1, there is a nifty, free little "program" called "Recovery Partition Creator 3.8" that can be used to re-create the Recovery Partition. Here is a link that discusses it, and also where one can download it:

http://musings.silvertooth.us/2014/07/recovery-partition-creator-3-8/

I did use twice when I was using Yosemite, and it worked. But, when I "moved" from Yosemite (10.10.5) to El Capitan (10.11.1), I followed #2 above. (I have also needed to do such a full recovery on two other occasions, and by following #2 above, it worked perfectly).

As it is, whenever I do such a recovery (whether #1 or #2), I still have to use TechTool Pro to re-create its convenient eDrive partition.

Thanks for that info, honestone.

Disk Warrior also allows another way of recovering. DW comes on a USB thumb drive. After installing DW, you have the option of creating the equivalent of a recovery partition on the thumb drive that not only has all the utilities of Apple's recovery partition, but also has an installation of DW. You can then boot from the thumb drive to do everything that the Apple recovery partition does, plus run DW.

SuperDuper must have taken a big hit over its inability to clone recovery partitions; it was after that became an issue that its price dropped.

I actually don't remember any "mention" of that. But, as I pointed out above, the Recovery Partition can be easily recreated.

Also, for those folks that use Carbon Copy Cloner, a new version, V 4.1.6, came out a couple of days ago.

Thanks! I am aware of that. I actually have the prior version of that excellent software. If I do need to use it, I just boot my machine from the (most recent) Super Duper! backup, and run DW from there. A little inconvenient, but since TechTool Pro works so well, I don't need to do it often.

I use TechTool Pro 8's ProToGo to create a bootable image on a thumb drive and use it. It offers more configuration options than Drive Genius similar offering.

Yup, it was a big issue when Lion and the first recovery partition hit the shelves.

I wouldn't call a clean install followed by restoring from a clone, your method for easily recreating a recovery partition, easy at all; in fact, I'd call it quite burdensome.

Which is likely why SuperDuper has taken such a hit.

That depends on how one defines burdensome. Yes, CCC is more convenient regarding the Recovery Partition. However, I have better much better disk maintenance tools than Disk Utility (TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior), plus if I do need to reinstall the OS (OS 10.11.1, in my case), I would first boot to the SuperDuper! backup first, then proceed with my #2 "method" I mentioned above. It would thus get created in that case, although I actually do not need the Recovery Partition (I don't do anything "in the cloud" either). Of course, I could follow my #1 approach and use the nifty software Recovery Partition Creator. That second approach does not take very long at all.

In fact, I am willing to bet that when does a restore from a CCC backup/clone, it must go through a similar step in terms of partitioning the drive, and then just "place" the software from the backed up Recovery Partition there. For either the OS installation doing that, or using Recovery Partition Creator, I don't believe it would take that much longer (nor be a huge burden).

In any event, it works just fine for my needs.

Hmm, another interesting approach that I was not aware of. As it is, I can either use the eDrive, or boot from the SuperDuper! backup, run TechTool Pro from there, and have it take care of my internal SSD. I actually have those same options with my MacBook Air while I am traveling, as I have a nice slim, external drive, and I always make a SuperDuper! backup of the stuff on my Air to a partition on that drive.

Which, in the end, is all that matters.