Originally Posted by artie505
I'm thoroughly confused by your followup, but rather than get into it now, I'll wait 'til I upgrade and can see what's going on in real time.
I have had some time to do some more experimentation with the latest version of CCC:
  • If I select an empty Drive, Partition, or Volume as the Destination: this menu appears
  • If I select the option to Erase the destination volume: The Destination is erased and a complete bootable system is cloned using the Apple Replication utility as shown in this screenshot.
  • If I attempt to rerun the same CCC task: it will copy the files that have been changed and Update the support volumes
  • If I select the option to Add a volume to the Destination: A new bootable volume is created with _CCC appended to the volume name. The target drive now looks like this. Note although there are two bootable images there are only one Preboot volume and one Recovery volume. But they both boot equally well.
  • In CCC Version 5.1.23-b3 (6104) the only way I can induce this menu to appear is select a destination that is is either empty or has only data in it.

Kudos to Mike Bombich for working out an elegant solution and an appropriate use of Apple's utility.

WISHLIST: I really wish there were a way to access the options offered for a blank destination for all destinations. Although the work around is simply to erase the destination before

COMMENT AND OPEN QUESTION: Given this is predicated on an Apple command line utility it would seem entirely possible for sophisticated users to create workflows or scripts to do simple clones and since third party utilities like OnyX, TinkerTool System, or MacPilot that are basically GUI front ends for Apple command-line utilities to provide basic cloning options at a much lower price than CCC or SuperDuper can possibly match? That said, even though Time Machine is, and will remain, my premier backup, I will continue to use and support CCC for three reasons:
  1. Set and forget automation
  2. The ability to manage and recover using APFS Snapshots
  3. More complex clone/backup options


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

— Albert Einstein