SuperDuper or Carbon Clone Copy

It depends upon the features you want. SuperDuper still has a bit of the shareware feel to it (and is cheaper), plus I only see mention of beta stage for Catalina. CCC is more power-user's kind of cloning software (and costs more). I just checked the site and it seems they have a Catalina version.

SD can be used in an ongoing trial mode if you are willing to have it back up your entire drive each time instead of things that just changed recently

I have never looked at SD closely so I do not know all its features.

I used SuperDuper excellent software for years until the Recovery partition was not included in the clone. This seem to be a short coming which maybe they worked out by now.

I moved onto Carbon Copy Cloner and never looked back.

3-2-1 Backup Strategy: three copies of your data, two different methods, and one offsite.

FWIW, I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner since it first came out

and have had nothing but good, reliable clones. If there is any issues

they are very quick to respond, some times even Mike Bombich himself

(originator and owner).

Hi ria, a wise decision! Both are excellent, I use SD myself. But as others have stated SuperDuper! is still in beta for Catalina.

I have Carbon Copy Cloner.

Works great for me, and it IS a good side-backup to Time Machine

Only thing, it only provides a copy of the last point you made it save, and not a running-list, like Time Machine.

-Merl1n

CCC does have the option of archiving old copies of files if your drive has storage. So if you're backing up a 1TB drive to a 2 TB drive and most of that 1 TB does not change then you will likely find some 3 month old versions of files still available. However, CCC does not present a "this is what your drive looked like last Tuesday" type of presentation. It just offers the files but you would have to use them to re-create your drive for anything except that last backup version. That's where Time Machine is nice. You can turn back the clock on your system.

CCC does offer a recovery partition option but itself asks you if you really think you need it because in most cases you don't really. The backup it makes is itself bootable and therefore acts as its own recovery service.

I use latest CCC and works great with all Mac OS's

SuperDuper for Catalina is still in beta testing...2nd one I believe. It is what I have always used and will again when it is ready.

This conversation reminded me of somethingI had been intending to check and I just found this handy utility:

Time Machine Editor - https://tclementdev.com/timemachineeditor/

I have been finding TM's automatic hourly backups a bit of a resource drain given that not much that I value changes hourly on my computer.