Carbon Copy Cloner is the first backup tool for creating bootable backups of macOS 11. The new version 5.1. 22 of Carbon Copy Cloner is now “officially qualified for Big Sur”, as the developer announced. The creation of a bootable backup can initially only be carried out using a manual workaround: You have to install Big Sur via a data backup created with Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to make the backup bootable, explains CCC developer Mike Bombich. macOS Big Sur with a signed system drive The backup tools have difficulties with the in macOS 11 Apple-signed system drive (“Signed System Volume”). The system drive is cryptographically sealed by the manufacturer, explains Bombich, if you simply copy it to another drive as usual, it will not be bootable without Apple’s seal.

Apple offers its in-house tool “Apple Software Restore – ASR” for cloning drives and thus supports its own APFS file system, but the tool does not seem to be comprehensive for macOS 11 Big Sur ready: The currently existing bugs in ASR will probably not be fixed until the general release of the operating system, emphasizes the developer – the workaround must be used accordingly for the time being. The procedure has been tested extensively with CCC.

Workaround probably only required temporarily In the “near future” the backup tool will probably be able to use ASR to clone the signed system drive of Macs with Big Sur. The backup of the user data continues to be done by Carbon Copy Cloner’s own copy routine. Then bootable backups of macOS will be able to be created automatically again, says Bombich. macOS 11 bring the biggest changes to macOS in round 20 Years, it took around a quarter to half a year just to get CCC running under macOS 11 – time for implementing new ones Functions are missing then.

(lbe)