How to clone MacOS Ventura onto an external drive

How are you cloning with Carbon Copy Cloner? Are you erasing the entire drive and formatting APFS before starting the clone?

Then are you using this option in cloning?

I know the new M1s and M2s require a special setting to be enabled before it can boot from an external SSD but don't remember what it is.

What happens when you try to boot? What messages do you get?

I use CCC and no issue. Be sure when making the clone that you use the "legacy" feature or it will not boot. Also be sure your security settings are set to use an external drive in your recovery partition.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore

One caveat about making the drive bootable, is that it may no longer be visible in Finder's Sidebar. Unsure if that was a bug that has been fixed or if it still is an issue in Ventura 13.2.1

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/macos-ventura-known-issues

After on of the macOS Monterey updates, many people reported on these forums that CCC was no longer able to make a bootable clone of macOS on an M1/M2 Apple Silicon Mac. In fact the developer of CCC posted when Big Sur was still the current OS that bootable macOS clones were now just a "best effort" due to all the major security changes Apple was implementing. I also remember a post by him stating that Apple told him the ability to do bootable clones was not going to continue for much longer when he was working with Apple to restore CCC's bootable clone functionality with Big Sur (cannot find this post at the moment).

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore

AFAIK, CCC is still able to make bootable clones of macOS on Intel Macs. The Apple Silicon Macs have a different drive layout and behavior which is likely affecting the ability to make a bootable clone these days.

Even if bootable clones are still possible on Apple Silicon, I personally I would not rely on that ability to exist in the future. Any macOS update could break it if it is not already broken.

I believe you need to also configure CCC to erase the destination drive as well as selecting the "Legacy" option. If this does not work, then it may mean that CCC is not able to make a bootable clone of your M1 Mac. You should also check the CCC website to see if there are any known issues with CCC and Ventura 13.2 and an M1 Mac. You do need to run CCC from Ventura since running CCC from an older OS won't work (or work well).

Macs can also be picky about the drives used for booting macOS. Also, connect the external drive directly to the Mac as well as disconnecting all other external devices in case one of them is interfering.

Edit:

quang2550 wrote:

I do enable the legacy feature but it doesn't boot up. I'm able to pick the CCC clone as bootup but it doesn't boot into the image

What exactly happens when you attempt to boot the CCC cloned drive? I know these newer Macs usually don't provide much information. Does it even seem to begin booting macOS or does it just silently boot to the internal drive?

SuperDuper claims to be able to clone Ventura to make bootable external drives. The process involves (a) complete erase to APFS+ of the external drive (entire device) using Disk Utility, (b) running SuperDuper instructing it to first erase (second erase, after the first Disk Utility erase) then make a bootable clone.

This works, but to me the bootable part is not really that important anymore because this bootable external drive cannot be updated to a later version of the MacOS -- it can boot but is not fully functional in some senses. To restore, the right way is to boot into recovery and restore a fresh MacOS followed by a migration from a backup of user files.

I have been making clones for many years, but the days of booting from and using such a clone long term seem to be gone. We also used to restore from such a clone to a new internal drive when the internal drive had to be replaced. I don't think this works like it used to; now the new MacOS has to be installed from recovery, or from a properly setup external bootable installer volume.

First I erase and format the external to APFS using Disk Utilities then use CCC and legacy setting to clone. When you pick the external drive to boot it will initially ask you to authorize user. Once that is done it should boot.

How To Clone Your Mac Using ASR

Above link from a fellow respected Contributor, just like you and me

I have no issue booting on my M1 Studio from external SSD. I use this to test a new OS before I change the internal. I currently have Ventura on an external drive to test.