OBSERVATIONS:
  • There are 200 items in /Applications on the booted master drive
  • There are 167 items in the /Applications folder on the Data volume of the un-booted clone
  • There are 167 items in the /Applications folder on the System volume of the un-booted clone.
  • There are 200 items in the /Applications folder of the BOOTED clone
  • There are 167 items in the /Applications folder on the Data volume of the un-booted master drive
  • There are 167 items in the /Applications folder on the System volume of the un-booted master drive
  • When running from the clone, Finder crashed twice, and at least one other task crashed, reasons unknown.


CONCLUSIONS:
¹ Cloning the data volume using the latest version of CCC is a complete clone leaving nothing out.
² Big Sur, and Catalina, do a good job of masking the physical structure to make it match the user's expectations.
³ CCC, together with the recovery drive, can be used to create a bootable backup volume
⁴ Personally, I will probably rely on the Recovery drive and Time Machine for backups and keep a bootable clone for dire emergency use only.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein