a question though: could you do the same sort of clone with Carbon Copy Cloner?
As I understand it, no. Carbon Copy Cloner will not preserve the existing TM backup on the destination volume. I don't use CCC, but I notice they recently added an option to preserve top-level items on the destination. That might suffice, but the same manual says CCC will not copy a TM backup from the source, and will erase one from the destination. Those (erasing TM and preserving top-level items) are contradictory assertions, so I dunno. I chose SuperDuper over CCC right after Leopard first came out, partly because SD played nicely with TM from the get-go, and CCC still tries to ignore it.
(The Lion-compatible version of SD was delayed about a month after Leopard was released, largely because it took lots of testing to make sure it worked with TM and hard-linked directories and all the other Leopard innovations. CCC chose to wimp out instead, sweeping all that exotica under the rug in order to get an earlier release. The real reason I chose SD was this attention to detail. He wouldn't release it until it handled everything perfectly, not merely the ordinary cases.)
The
asr command-line tool used to be able to do file-level copies that would preserve existing files on the destination, but the man page (at least on 10.7.2) says the --erase option is now mandatory.
I think you might be able to cobble together the same effect using
ditto (to copy all the files) followed by
bless to make the volume bootable.
Feel free to experiment with any disposable TM backup you have lying around.
