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Previously was using Carbon Copy Cloner to back up to disk images on an external USB HDD, and thought that disk images were the only way.

Having set up CCC again to clone onto a new external HDD after the previous HDD's failure, I realise that it is possible to do a direct clone (files cloned directly, ie not enclosed in a disk image).

What are the advantages of backing up to disk images as opposed to direct clones? (As I'm backing up multiple Macs onto the same external HDD, I don't require the clones to be bootable)

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  • From what I read, doing a bootable direct clone using CCC had its obvious advantage of being bootable. But is it as easy to restore a HDD volume from a direct file clone it is from a disk image?
    – Prembo
    Commented Nov 2, 2016 at 12:50

3 Answers 3

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Personally, I've never worked to .dmg, having just a single machine to backup, but that would seem the way to go for multiple machines, keeps everything separate.

A straight clone would be a bootable image of one machine only [per partition if you pre-partitioned it].

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system?
linux = dd command
Windows Acronis Clone
osx = dd command

dd options 

> dd  if=<source file name> of=<target file name>
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  • This doesn't answer the question and is pretty low on content. Why would you recommend Acronis? What would be the advantage of using dd? With the requirement of the original question using dd in that manner might be problematic as well.
    – Seth
    Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 8:40
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dd can create a clone of a hard drive. Whether or not this is bootable depends on the formatting you choose for your media.

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