Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Bootable Monterey Clone

I am almost finished transferring to a new Apple Studio and updating it to macOS 12.4. As part of the process I re-configured my various external drives and devices and I have been testing various applications mostly to be sure the various registrations, etc. all took place. To make a long story short, during the process, I downloaded the latest Carbon Copy Cloner update, CCC 6.1.1 (7323), and re-ran all my various CCC tasks to be sure the drive configurations were recognized and working. As a part of the CCC testing, I attempted creating a bootable clone using and the "legacy cloning" process, which I had done successfully several times in the past. Everything went according to plan until I attempted to boot from the clone. The boot process appeared to go normally up to a point -- and then hung and never continued... I tried booting from the external drive three times with the same results.

I have used CCC to create bootable external clones of Catalina and Big Sur in the past, but although I know that I created a Monterey clone before, I don’t recall if i ever actually booted it. I have formulated a testing plan to isolate the cause of the failure, but it would take a lot of time and energy, both of which are in short supply at the moment, so I thought I would take a shortcut and ask you all...

• Have you had any success creating a bootable Monterey CLONE using CCC or SuperDuper?
• Has anyone been able to INSTALL a bootable copy of Monterey on an external drive?

[b]CONFESSION: [b] To be honest, I am having trouble justifying a lot of effort on something that my past history indicates will seldom if ever, be necessary or used other than as a curiosity. Unless there is a lot of interest on FineTunedMac I will in all probability abandon the project.

I've got three CCC clones - 2 in separate containers on my internal drive and 1 on my external drive - and although I normally just ASSume that they're all bootable, I just experimented and successfully booted into all three.

At first, I didn't realize that CCC could turn the trick, and I got involved with SuperDuper!, which claimed to have successfully created bootable clones, but I experienced the same dead-end hangs as you when I tried to boot into them. After a couple of back and forths with Dave Nanian, he opined that it sounded like I was running into some sort of conflict, and suggested a safe boot which, lo and behold, was successful. I was able to scope out the conflicting item - a legacy extension that was perpetuated but wouldn't load - and since I trashed it, my clones have all booted successfully.

Before learning that I could create bootable clones, I tried to install Monterey on my external following Mike Bombich's instructions, and it hung, although I suspect that it would have booted had I known to trash that extension.

As far as maintaining bootable clones going forward, they still serve their intended purpose with Intel Macs, but they aren't especially useful with M-1 Macs.

I have three extensions that are in the system area, all three are current versions of current software: SoftRAID, Rogue Ameaba's ACE, and one other that require reduced SIP settings and re-compiling the extensions buffer in order to run. But those were present before and did not prevent previous CCC clones from loading or running -- but without those extensions being operative. However I will give Safe Boot a try.


Agreed! In retrospect, having a bootable clone available in the event my primary system failed was always a security blanket. but, I don't recall ever actually needing to use it other than to run Disk Utility, TechTool Pro, Drive Genius to effect volume repairs on the primary boot drive. The advent of the Recovery Drive with Disk Utility has pretty rendered an external boot drive -- not to mention Micromat's Drive -- redundant. Add to that the reliance on a hidden partition on the internal drive to boot the external drive at least on Apple Silicon and any usefulness becomes very limited.

In my Monterey, I haven't got ACE in /Library/Extensions. It's in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ACE.driver and /Library/Preferences/Audio/Data/ACE.driver, so if you've still got an extension, it may be your problem...if, of course, a safe boot turns out to be successful.

AudioHijack 3.8.11, that is.

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but I just ran Etrecheck Pro and it reported I have six kernel extensions running, four are associated with SoftRAID, and one is a USB driver for a label printer I access via WiFi, and the fourth is used by DriveDX to access data from USB drives. I have two Rogue Ameaba products, Airfoil and SoundSource, that require ACE, but apparently, it is no longer an extension. My question is why did I have to reduce the level of protection to install it?

These are the items I see in /Library/Extensions:

AppleDataSetManagement.kext
AppleMobileDevice.kext
HighPointIOP.kext
HighPointRR.kext
SATSMARTDriver.kext
SATSMARTLib.plugin
SoftRAID.kext

I've never had to reduce my level of protection (Do you mean disable SIP?) to install ACE for Audio Hijack. (I've got no idea if this is pertinent, but I just noticed that AH no longer tells me it has full disk access.)

Your printer driver sounds like the likely culprit if it is, in fact, an extension that's preventing your clones from booting. (I.e. does your printer still run as expected?)

The printer runs as expected. In fact, that is a USB-related kext and there is no USB connection to the printer. The OWC SoftRAID kext does have to be there in order to connect to my RAID array and that will not install, load, or run, unless the volume protection is reduced. There is no T2 chip in Apple silicon macs and therefore no SIP per. se. Volume protection is just that and is not set at the system level rather, at the boot volume level. So if you have multiple boot volumes (clones or installs) the volume protection has to be set independently for each boot volume. I have never been able to install a kext on an external volume. Supposedly there is a process to make it work, but I have been unsuccessful getting it to work.

Have you tried a safe boot yet?

Here is the latest from the Carbon Copy Cloner developer about cloning, as found on MacInTouch:

macOS changes create backup issues
Apple’s radical, proprietary changes to macOS are creating issues for critical backup and cloning procedures, as Bombich Software discusses in Carbon Copy Cloner support documentation.

Creating legacy bootable copies of macOS (Big Sur and later)
Copying Apple’s system is now an Apple-proprietary endeavor; we can only offer “best effort” support for making an external bootable device on macOS Big Sur (and later OSes). We present this functionality in support of making ad hoc bootable copies of the system that you will use immediately (e.g. when migrating to a different disk, or for testing purposes), but we do not support nor recommend making bootable copies of the system as part of a backup strategy.

… You should not expect the destination to remain bootable after running additional backup tasks to the destination (i.e. via manual or scheduled backups).

… You may select an encrypted volume as the destination, but the volume will be erased, and will not be encrypted when the task completes.

Latest, true, but in reality, old hat, because Mike posted that months ago.

For what it's worth, I've been maintaining "legacy bootable copies" of Monterey (I skipped Big Sur.) for months, including running additional backups every two days with no issues. My clones have remained bootable.

I think Mike is presenting a worst case scenario to keep his butt covered.

I decided to try one more time to create a bootable clone with CCC using Apple's legacy utility and this time when I bootied into the clone -- IT WORKED. Then this warning appeared on the screen followed a few seconds later with this from Rogue Amaeba's ACE. When I clicked on the Repair lozenge this appeared. I entered the password ended up in System Preferences > Security & Privacy and the notification about current security settings. When I click on Enable System Extensions... this appears.

Lesson learned:

• Although ACE no longer appears in /Library/Extensions, it still requires reducing the volume security to load and run on Apple Silicon.
• A comparison of the volume structure of the internal drive and the cloned drive is sufficient to confirm the clone is NOT stand-alone bootable

I went through the same ACE rigamarole with the most recent AudioHijack update, but with the exception of not having to reduce my level of protection, which may be/is likely because I run with SIP permanently disabled. (Hmmm... If I'm correct about SIP, the M-1 procedure is simpler than the Intel procedure, i.e. it requires booting into Recovery only once, to permanently enable extensions, as opposed to having to boot into it twice - once to disable SIP and once to re-enable it - for each new installation. Or is the M-1 procedure an item by item one too?)

I'm not sure that's as clear-cut as you think it is.

If I'm understanding your screenshots, it looks like the external clone is non-bootable because it doesn't include the iBootSystemContainer. But regardless of which component is missing, an M-1 Mac apparently not only can't be booted from an external drive if its internal drive is DEAD, it can't be booted from one under any circumstances. (What happens when you try to boot the external clone? Error message...hang...?)

And if the former, isn't the M-1 less secure than an Intel Mac in that respect?

Once per boot volume as protection is at the VOLUME level not the system. After installation, raising the protection level will prevent installed Keats from loading.


As the internal drive is on Apple’s silicon blanket and I am not willing to destroy my computer to test this out, I have no clue. I am not that curious.

My "understanding" of your reply is that once a volume's protection level is lowered to install kext #1, it must remain that way, and any additional kexts can be installed with no further ado? If so, an M-1 Mac seems to be less secure than an Intel Mac in that respect.

You misunderstood my question... It's long been established that if an M-1 Mac's internal drive goes belly up, the machine is dead without a new drive and a visit to an Apple store to "initialize" it, but I've been wondering if an M-1 can be booted from an external drive if its internal drive is functional, and your post indicates that it can't.

Once the Volume protection has been reduced each kext Developer must be approved in System Preferences > Security & Privacy before the kext will be compiled and the system rebooted before the kext becomes functional. At the lowest level of protection, no permission is required to update installed kexts.


You don’t need a trip to the Apple Store to make an internal drive bootable again if you have a second running Mac, a copy of the apple installer package, a firewire connection between the two machines, and Apple Configurator 2. The question though is whether it will work on an external drive. After a few hours of searching the internet, I still do not know for sure. I did find several articles on creating a bootable eternal drive recommending Mike Bombich’s solution of cloning using regular clone (not the legacy cloning option) then later installing macOS on the drive using the Recovery Drive or a bootable installer. One article recommended using Apple’s asr utility (the same one used in CCC’s legacy utility method), and this one describes using the apple Configurator 2 (scroll down to How to Factory Reset Bricked M1 Mac. But nowhere did I find anything on creating a stand-alone bootable external drive).

After due consideration, I have come to the conclusion Time Machine can handle the vast majority of data recovery duties. In the event of failure of the internal boot drive, Mike Bombich's solution of using CCC to clone the data volume and installing macOS from the Recovery Drive, if and when needed, will suffice for 90% of the situations where a bootable external clone might be used, and Apple Configurator 2 for the remaining 10%. Ie. I don't need a bootable external clone, so I am going to let this drop.