we cannot copy the system and retain versioned backups of your data. That utility is very one-dimensional choosing to copy the system requires that we sacrifice other backup features, e.g. Starting in macOS Big Sur (11.0), the system resides on a cryptographically sealed 'Signed System Volume' that can only be copied by an Apple-proprietary utility. It has also grown increasingly difficult to make a copy of the operating system. Apple Silicon Macs will not start up (at all) if the internal storage is damaged or otherwise incapacitated, so there is very little value, if any, to maintaining a bootable rescue device for those Macs. The reliability of Apple's External Boot solution has waned in the past several years, however, and the situation has grown starkly worse on the new Apple Silicon platform. In the past, a 'bootable backup' was an indispensable troubleshooting device that even novice users could rely upon in case their production startup disk failed. Please bear in mind that you can restore all of your documents, applications, and system settings from a standard CCC backup without the extra effort involved in establishing and maintaining a bootable device. when migrating to a different disk, or for testing purposes), but we do not support nor recommend making bootable copies of the system as part of a backup strategy. We present this functionality in support of making ad hoc bootable copies of the system that you will use immediately (e.g.

Copying Apple's system is now an Apple-proprietary endeavor we can only offer 'best effort' support for making an external bootable device on macOS Big Sur (and later OSes).

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