CCC clone is smaller by 100Gb

Question

CCC clone is smaller by 100Gb

I am installing Lion on my wife's MBP. Prior to installing I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of the hard disk (500Gb SSD). The Get Info reports that the original disk has used 310Gb, and the clone disk has used 210Gb. I can boot from the clone and the files *appear* to be all on the clone.

A discrpancy of 100Gb seems serious. Has anyone else had this kind of discrepancy? Or should I become very concerned about this?

Any help appreciated.

James

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 500Gb SSD

Posted on Aug 27, 2011 2:37 AM

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Answer 1

X423424X

Level 6

14,271 points

Aug 27, 2011 3:00 AM in response to James Roberston

You should probably ask this question in the CCC discussions (problems or questions). But my guess is CCC (nor any other relatively "smart" boot drive cloner) is going to copy unnecessary stuff that's only going to be recreated when you actually use the clone (for example, stuff in /tmp, vm paging space, certain caches, and so on).

One experiment you can try is reboot off your ssd and check the size after booting (/tmp will be cleared and vm space reset). How much closer in size is the ssd at that point compared to its clone?

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Answer 2

Aug 27, 2011 3:10 AM in response to X423424X

Thank you. The sizes remain the same after booting from both disks. I will check the CCC Discussions as you suggest.

Best regards,

James

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Answer 3

Aug 27, 2011 3:17 AM in response to James Roberston

Ah, just found it. She had 97Gb of content in her Trash file. CCC does not copy the Trash. That's close enough for the 100Gb discrepancy. The rest is probably caches etc. (My wife seems to think that taking out the trash from the house is my job. This apparently applies to her computer as well.)

Cheers,

James

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