M1 HD Clone with SuperDuper

I haven't tried using CCC with an M1 Mac yet, but CCC will clone a bootable macOS APFS volume on an Intel Mac as long as you right-click or control-click on the destination in CCC and select the "Legacy" option. You will need to use CCC v6.x and you do need to run CCC from the same version of macOS or newer that you want to clone. For example if you want to clone macOS 11.x Big Sur, then you need to run CCC from a macOS 11.x or 12.x boot drive since older versions of macOS do not recognize some of the changes Apple has implemented with APFS volumes and how they are linked together behind the scenes.

CCC WILL create bootable Monterey clones on our 2016 and 2020 Intel MBPs, but WILL NOT create bootable clones on any of our three Intel iMacs: 2020, 2020 and 2015. Bombich cannot explain it; I can recreate both scenarios at will.

But to keep all installations the same, each Mac has a bootable standby SSD system created by direct installation of MacOS and data migration using Setup Assistant and CCC's Standard Clone (Time Machine-like backup) as the data source.

I have made a bootable drive using CCC on my Mac Mini M1. Sometimes it states that this disk has not been authorized but I just click continue anyway and it appears to work ok. However, I find having a bootable drive is not very useful with the M1 as long as my internal is large enough because if the internal drive fails you cannot use the external anyway unlike the Intel Macs.

You need to do a full backup the first time, with the most recent version of SuperDuper!:

https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/comments/its_a_trip_to_the_moon_not_a_marathon/

I don't believe (at this time) that Superduper! or Carbon Copy Cloner can effectively clone an APFS formatted drive to an external drive. Check with Shirt-Pocket to confirm it.

You are welcome.