Is carbon copy cloner safe to use on MacBook Pro M4

Is carbon copy cloner safe to use on MacBook Pro M4. I'll be using it to clone an external hdd to another external hdd. I'm using Time Machine as my backup for my MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Nov 12, 2025 9:47 AM

Reply
4 replies

Nov 12, 2025 11:59 AM in response to Sr apple student

Yes.


In the old days, if you told Finder to copy very large numbers of files, it would sometimes choke with Error -43. Folder-to-folder "backups" with CCC didn't have that problem.


Note that if your source disk is formatted using APFS, and APFS has been doing "lazy" file copying, the backup might be significantly larger than the source. Backup software doesn't know about - or know how to copy - this APFS optimization. So even if two files share space "under the hood" on the source disk, they will each require space on the backup disk.

Is carbon copy cloner safe to use on MacBook Pro M4

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.