Does anyone know if CopyCatX any better at preserving authorisations than SuperDuper (as it's a bit more expensive than SuperDuper)?

Here are the main theree choices:

Carbon Copy Cloner (free)

SuperDuper ($27.95 - free trial)

CopyCatX ($57.95 - free trial)

I'm told that SuperDuper and CopyCatX are best for preserving hard disc authorisations.

There's a comparison survey here (which doesn't include CopyCatX) that doesn't recommend Carbon Copy Cloner because it "doesn’t preserve BSD flags, locked flag, creation date, HFS+ extended attributes, ACLs [uses ditto]." The same survey highly recommends SuperDuper because of "perfect preservation of all metadata

I don't understand any of the tech jargon (yet!).

There's quite a long thread at Big Blue Lounge here: what is the best for cloning your system drive? with talk about CopyCatX and it's ability to preserve authorisations.

Tim,

I can't comment on CopyCatX, but I can weigh in on Super Duper.

I switched from CCC to Super Duper about 3 months ago, and never looked back.

SD's user interface is stupid easy to understand, and my favorite feature is "Smart Update", which only updates those files on your system drive that have been added, or changed, since your last back-up. This feature alone makes it easier to keep my system drive copy up to date, because what would take several hours with CCC (erasing and making a full back-up every time), can be done in usually 10, maybe 15 minutes with Super Duper (after the initial full back-up has been done, of course).

Yes, SuperDuper's interface looks very appealing from the screenshots on their site. And they have a super friendly way of writing - not at all tech-headie!

But have you actually tried re-installing your system from a SuperDuper clone, Jim? What I really want to know is how well it (or CCX if anyone knows) preserves authorisations?

The latest CCC - 3, now has an improved interface but, it does not have the smart clone feature. One has to make the configuration to do that. Then the user can save each config for specific types of saves. Not as easy as Super.
On my G5 I have used that app for years and never had any issues. It depends on the level of copying that you need. For me CCC works and was very fast on my G5 whereas on the Intel Macpro it is slower / takes longer to copy less data than what is on the old machine.
It used to take 20 to 30 minutes on my G5-dual 2.5 with 8 GB ram and the drive size was less than 60 GB. On my new Intel machine, less data and less RAM, it took twice as long.

Going to look at the other apps for clonining as there is more and possibly, better apps.

I have not needed to do that yet (knock on wood), but I have booted from it, and it works as expected. As to the authorizations of instruments, I have not tested that either. I'd be happy to re=-boot from my cloned drive, open Logic, and try and load a third party AI, like an East West Instrument, or a Spectrasonics instrument. Would that work? Or would the fact that my original system drive is still connected, and visible to the computer, defeat the test results?

To answer that question regarding authorisations, I believe that no matter what cloning tool you use, it will never work and the reason is this. Since every time there is a clone operation, a new system ID is generated at time of clone. This is the case for new installs on the same HD even. I used to run a few different drives all off one system and all had different system IDs for ea Boot Volume and for new intsalls every time. THis was using CCC.
However, I noted that even for new installs a new ID is generated. I will bet that it is rooted in Disk Utility or something at that level.
Since there is a change to the system ID and for that reason alone, the PIs will not open and, NI, Ivory albeit, whatever the app is, will not work until you get another license key for that particular sys ID.

I have booted and run all my SW off the cloned drive and ALL had to be relicensed.

If there someone out there that knows how to clone the system ID as well, that is what we need to know.

That's what I thought, and thanks for confirming that.

Apart from Native Instruments, do you know which other companies use the system ID approach?

NI, Spectrasonics, Ivory, Digital Performer, East West and Vienna and lots of others seem to be using that method.
Let's see hang on here. OK. It looks like it is stated that for the Apple platform, there is one standard method of keying and that is employed by all PIs. There may be a few that do not use this method and I do not know since I do not have all the PIs out there but merely a few.

But all mine follow the standard keying scheme. That is all I know.

Actually, a few months ago, I did have to boot from my cloned drive, and at the time, my cloned drive had been done with CCC.

I seem to remember that all my Spectrasonics plug-ins worked, but the Native Instruments ones did not. However, since NI updated their system, generating a new authorization was really easy. It only became cumbersome because I had so many NI instruments to re-authorize... but the process was relatively painless.

I can't speak for all my hardware authorizations though, but those two, I do remember.

Another reason why the iLok or Syncrosoft concept ain't so bad after all....

Jim, what is ilok and syncrosoft? What is the objecives of those apps. I am assuming something to do with Key Generators or some type of management system? Please do inform. CM

Chris,

Those are USB Dongles. A lot of plug-in manufacturers are using those instead of hardware ID for authorization. My Vienna Instruments use the Syncrosoft USB key, whereas my Waves plug-ins, and DUY plug-ins use the iLok key.

Obviously, should you need to install a new system drive, the authorizations aren't affected, because they exist on an external USB device.

Wicked, wow, that really appeals to me. That is like what we have for CAD packages and other Engineering SW tools at work. Man, I wish that all used that vs. the online reg & email requests like for Ivory and wait for a key code. I could not get any of the spectrasonics to work in DP when run on the alt boot drive. At the DP PI checking stage, all were not unlocked. So, appears that there is some dependancies on the DAW SW that stores certain info differently.

I just got done reading about that latest CopyCatX and that one looks really good. It will also do the Microshaft Drive for me as well; all off the Intel Mac too. This is one thing that I really need to be able to do since Billyware is prone to crash and burning in mid flight. This app will enable me to simply wipe the drive and reimage the entire drive in one go. That is definately worth the cash. That alone sold me on this app. Going to get that one tonight and give a shot.

superdrive, simpliest, easiest, fastest drive clonening program. Great program. But this is what I recommend, and if you do this, it will never go wrong. What ever hard drive you wanna boot up with, do not operate super drive on it, I mean you could but I find it much much faster do it on a third drive.

I always use a back up OS system (size can be as little as possible), to optimize and rebuild my working OS drive. And it never gives me any problems.


Drive A (you main drive, all your applications are on this one)
Drive B (Back up Drive, a clone copy of Drive A)
Drive C (Small size, simpliest Mac OS 10.4.10, make sure you take out printer drivers and language stuff when you install it, it will be as little as 3GB or less)

On drive C install super drive or other drive utilities, and from there you can do all things from Drive A to Drive B with minimum efforts.

I couldn't find Superdrive. Do you have a link?

At current most simply cop the main HD which could have Disk Warrior, Disk Util, a Cloning package and possible other tools. We boot into the backup drive and run all those from the backup drive. THis is the method that most use and this only requires two drives and not 3. I have had zero issues when using this method.

Why do you use a third drive? Does superdrive cop the windows side too or just OS X????

That is hard to find. Hang on. I had the one for the darn DVD CD Drive. Still can't find that as a SW tool. Is that a SW tool or HW?????

I can comment from my experience with CopyCatX. The others listed are backup tools where as CopyCatX is a disk duplication tool. It makes exact copies your drive. Everything is retained from icon placement, file permissions, etc. Even data contained in free space (deleted files etc) is retained (SubRosaSoft's forensic product MacForensicsLab also uses this drive duplication technology from what I can tell). It uses block copying instead of the file copying that others use. This is why it can retain that information and also makes it faster. At Macworld San Fran this year I spoke with an Apple programmer. He was one of the authors of HFS+ and Disk First Aid (old school) among others. He told me that when Leopard is released, only CopyCatX will be able to duplicate a drive because it is the only one that will also be able to copy Time Machine's hidden bits. There are some other nice features I make use of. CopyCatX has the ability to duplicate from one drive to multiple drives at once. This works great when I'm looking to deploy several machines from a single disk image. CopyCatX has become my disk copying tool of choice.

Great, as I got it already while at work. I thought that it was the best out there after reading up on it today. Going to install it now in fact. Thanks a lot for the fast feedback. CM

Hey, thanks for that info. Good stuff there. I guess I'll start setting my sights on getting CopyCatX in the near future. Until this thread, I hadn't even heard of it.

MacJunkie,

Would this mean that CopyCatX is able to clone the System ID? (see previous quote)

Tim, from what I have been reading at the programmers sites, it looks like if this cloning is done on the SAME drive it will be ok. Now, no one I know clones to the same drive as this would require a partition. I don't recommend partitioning the primary boot drives at all with OS X HFS+. Plus, if the drive fails mechanically, the partition is of no use if the drive is broke. So, a second hard drive is the way to go.

If it is cloned to a different HD, it will automatically have another SYS ID generated irregardless of the app used.

We will real world test it as I have that app. THe demo was useless as was with Super Duper. They disabled all the cloning. I had to buy it in order to try it. Marketing at it's best.

They did not even email me the damn key. I had to hunt for it on their site after creating an account. Was not too thrilled with that process. I have it now and all I need to do is fire it up after work and see what the results are. CM

Depends on which System ID your asking about. The ROM one, no. The OS one, yes. Another note. I've used all of the duplication tools and CopyCatX is the only one that can copy a drive with a Boot Camp volume and have the Boot Camp volume still be functional.

Oh, don't misunderstand me, I do agree that CCX looks like a clear winner for sure and, it can clone the windows drive as well. As for Leopard, it looks like CCX is the only one that is compatible right now.

The SYS ID:
Users note that there is a change in the System Configuration ID at time of Formatting or Cloning or doing a clean install. Re-Installing over the SAME drive does not affect this ID and, all the PI keys remain intact.

Not sure about the "Archive and Install" deal. Jim F knows about this. Maybe he will remind us as to what the result was.

This is the ID that is being discussed. The objective was to see if there was a method in which all the PI License Keys tied into the Primary Sys ID remain intact and not broken on the Back Up / Cloned Drive.

This of course, is in the case of a Primary Boot failure, this would prevent down time and re-keying the PIs. That was the question- would a certain clone tool work to also clone the sys ID. I think not; as I understand it, this ID is generated even before the cloning starts by the FW on the board or, "possibly" at some root level code.

The fact we do know is that both CCC and Super do not work for this application. It simply may be a case in which there is no app that will do this. THink about the potential- users could just reproduce tons of hard drives and sell them as a pre loaded configurations on ebay with all licenses intact. Just drop the drive in and your good to go. Talk about Mass Pirating.

Now, I would not do that but, I am interested in finding out how I, the sole user, could use that to my advantage. THis would save me lots of time having to rekey my apps every time I want to run a different version of OS X so that I can test it before updating my main drive. I have had to call, email companies just to get some person to kindly grant me another key. This took days sometimes a week. This process would benefit lots of users.

super sorry, my super bad, it's superduper.

Isn't that a James Brown Number? Super Bad! Good one. lol

Well, couldn't have come at a better time than today to test the CopyCatX out as I just sold the old Mac and need to get it ready today for delivery. I am sure glad that I came across that link for X as I had never heard of it before.
I am going to make a complete duplicate of my primary boot drive OS X and then I am going to make a copy of the Windows side as well.

Will report the results here later. C

cmcken1 or Macjunkie,

Does CopyCatX have anything like SuperDuper's smart back up facility, mentioned in Jim's post below? It would seem not from perusing the CCX manual, but I haven't read it cover to cover...

cmcken1 or Macjunkie,

Does CopyCatX have anything like SuperDuper's 'smart back up' facility, mentioned in Jim's post below? It would seem not from perusing the CCX manual, but I haven't read it cover to cover.

The answer to the smart copy is no. The manual is terrible. There are no clear instructions on how to use it. It states that it only works with HFS+ formats only. So, Initially I "assumed" that it would not do the win side. However, it goes on to say something about "copy" well, there is no copy button but only duplicate. The manual was written in a way that made it sound like there was another mode called copy. I was trying to find the copy function. Tossed the manual and went for it. I was able to clone the windows side (amazingly) and get that done in 1.75 hours. I did not have time to the Mac backup yet as I was in a mad dash to get the machine delivered down to San Diego.

As for the what it does: Three things.

1. Backup / restore
2. Duplicate
3. Recover faulty media

That is it. It offers no options in the way of selecting as this tool looks like it was designed for cloning and restoring and that is it. It aslo takes a lot longer than any app I have used.

Now, for the Mac side. Will report later about the keys. On the Windows side, no keys, no pop ups to register the apps etc came up. Like that. But, that is the norm with Win. Let's try the Mac now.

I've been playing around with the demos of both SuperDuper and CopyCatX and like you say, cmcken1, CopyCatX is very much a one trick pony, whereas SuperDuper seems to do a lot more. Also, the SuperDuper manual is excellent and the author seems to be bending over backwards to cover every eventuality. I guess for me it looks like SuperDuper will be the one to go for as I don't have an Intel machine and it's half the price of CopyCatX.

This thing stinks. It will not work without 3 drives. This sucks. BOTH the Source and Destination drives have to be unmounted. This means that I would need an extra drive just to run this app on. YOu make the call. I already know what I think of it. So, I am out the door and do not have time to waist on Setting up the third drive now. Later.

CopyCatX is a disk duplication utility not a backup program like the other options. And wait til you have a drive with bad blocks. Other programs will stop in their tracks and fail (or lock up). CopyCatX can work around bad blocks to recover a bad drive.

Would it not therefore be a good idea to run DiskWarrior before doing important backups using Super Duper?

IMO making fairly regular use of DiskWarrior is one of those essential maintenance tasks - so using it in conjunction with SuperDuper to make sure that what you're backing up is organised as it should be is pretty important I think.

Personally I don't tend to do incremental "system" back ups because, re-authorisation hassles aside, I always think it's a good opportunity to wipe the drive and start afresh. This means I have a back up of a "nothing added" solid version of the OS (currently 10.4.8) and my incremental back ups cover my User folder, my Logic Songs folder (on another drive) and my Samples folder (on a third drive).

The danger is that incremental System backups might introduce recently corrupted or damaged files into the very thing you're relying on to bail you out of trouble.

Roll on Time Machine !!!

cheers

Yes and no the the Disk Warrior thing. In theory the best way to do it would be to backup the drive, then run Disk Warrior and then backup afterwards. That way, should something happen while running Disk Warrior, you have a backup to work with. Now that's the ideal way but it's much more work then most will go through. I'd say you run Disk Warrior. then backup but only if you have a previous backup just incase something happens during the disk repair.

Well I am back at it. Still going to go through until the end to obtain results for the first objective: will using CCX copy / preserve keys. Let's give it a shot and see. Luckily, I have free space on the Win drive where I will format it for OS X and run it from there. Give me a couple of hours to go through this process. I will post the results later.

just an just in case any of you wondering how to get extra partition from the current hard drive (no OS is on it) you can use volumeworks to resize it.

Thanks, I was looking for an App that does just that in fact.
Perfect, thanks C<

I've been using VolumeWorks lately with my new Leopard installs. Make 2 partitions on a test drive. Image the Leopard installer to one and boot from it, then install it on the 2nd partition. Once that's done I boot back to the system's main drive and use VolumeWorks to delete the installer partition and expand the Leopard partition to take up the full drive size. Apple also creates a 200MB partition of free space for every partition you create using Disk Utility or the OS X installer. The only explanation that's been given for this space is that it's for "future use". You can also use VolumeWorks to recover that space.

Great info. One thing about CCX that one should be aware of, it will copy the ENTIRE drive size and not just the data. I am giving this thing a real work out. I need to use it more to know what the limitations are. So far, there are plenty to complain about.

For starters, CCX cops the whole drive and then blocks it to another drive of equal or larger only than the source it came from. So, if you have cloned a 74 GB drive to a larger drive and want to go back to the 74 GB drive, your stuck as it will have 500GB size and will not be able to fit onto the 74GB drive.

I like what the app does, but find it very limiting and I have to find workarounds. Something that used to take me 30 Minutes to do has now taken hours and, extra drives and wasted drive space. I have to be real careful about what is going to where. I have had to move stuff off here to free up a drive in order to get this thing just to clone drives which is a real hassle. Once it is setup it will not be an issue. I will just have to keep OS X boot volume on a third drive in order to use it. I will have to partition a drive to do so.

Where did you get Leopard? I thought that was not going to be out until October.

As a developer you get access to the current preview version. Very buggy so you can't use it as your primary OS (there are still a good number of applications that don't work well with it either) but it's kind of interesting to play with if you have free time.

Are you saying that Volumeworks can create a partition on a drive that is already in use - ie has stuff on it. Put another way are you saying that you don't have to reformat and erase the drive - Volumeworks can just create a partition on my Lacie external that is 50% filled with files already? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

yes that's what it does, as long as it does not have OS installed, you can make the existing partition into two partitions without formating it, PC has something to do this for a long time, and finally something good arrived for Mac. But it's gonna take a while, and make sure you backup your important stuff. I tried with it, and it worked fine. But backing up your files can never go wrong.

OK - so you can't do it with the system drive, right?

But can you install an OS in the partition that Volumeworks creates?

no, you cannot do it with a system drive, it will not allow you unmount the drive





yes you can install OS in the partition that's created by volumeWorksks

You can order VolumeWorks on a bootable CD. Then you can partition your main system drive once booted from the VolumeWorks CD. Same with CopyCatX. Boot from the CD and you can duplicate one drive to another without the need for a third drive.

The answer for cloning the SYS ID is as follows:
I was able to use CCX to create an image and boot from it and use all these SW packages without a need to reauthorize any of them and they all work and all works just like it does on my prim boot volume. No settings need to be set or changes made.

CCX is not free though and requires a license key and requires unmounting the drive before duping thus requiring a three drive setup.

... thanks for referring me here from the other thread I started.

The problem I had using CCC was that all preferences had been lost on the cloned drive. Will CCX also retain these?

Also, with CCX, is it possible to clone a drive that contains three partitions?

And finally, you point out the need for a 3 drive setup. Can the startup drive drive that contains CCX be on another, networked Mac? I want to duplicate my G5's system drive onto another drive within the G5. I have a G4 networked to it, so could I run CCX from the G4?

Thanks,

FS

As I posted above, YES, no relicensing needed as it retains all 100%. Can not clone a three partition drive as far as I know of since at the time of writing this. However, there is an option to select the physical drive itself as well as the partions so, It may be possible. Google it.

Yes, to the last question as long as the OS is up to date with CCX. Can do.

However, there is one thing that one has to be aware of. Please read the post here posted July 8th 6:22PM and you will find it there.

cmcken1, I can't find that post... Could you tell me what it was about?