Carbon Copy Cloner no longer free ):

Sad but true, & I don't believe you'll find a 10.8 solution for free.

Disk Utility, which is built in to Mac OS X (just see your Hard Drive -> Applications -> Utilities folder), is technically capable of cloning a drive. While it copies file-by-file, rather than block-by-block, it can generally get the job done so long as you're not trying to clone the disk you booted from. This is an option that will always be available. So is the dd command, which is a better choice if you're comfortable messing around in the OS X command line.

Recover a dead hard drive using dd

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050302225659382

I believe it's still free if you made a donation in the past.

Yes. This from the origin site.

If I donated for CCC in the past, will I have to purchase the new version?

No. To express our appreciation to all of the people who have sent a verifiable donation to Bombich Software prior to July 24, 2012, we will grant a registration code for CCC 3.5. If you are a previous donor and see a message about a 30-day trial, you can retrieve your registration code here.

Link to whole info page.

http://help.bombich.com/kb/overview/carbon-copy-cloners-transition-to-a-commerci al-product-frequently-asked-questions

I paid the $40. Seems a small price to pay for what it offers.

My humble opinion.

I agree with your assement of the value of the CCC software.

When the fee requirement started I gladly paid the price. Sometime later I remembered that I had made a donation several years ago. It has been worth many times the cost by giving me an unmeasurable sense of security.

There have been too many great programs that failed to survive and mature from lack of user support.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut “In this world, you get what you pay for.”

Kudos, I try to support SW other than Apple's most likely did donate to it myself. 🙂

You can still find CCC 3.4.3 or 3.4.4. for download if you look around. What i'm wondering is: Can CCC clone a drive to a *smaller* drive..? I have an 80GB hard drive with a fresh install of OSX 10.5 on it, and I want to "clone" that, but the only other drive I have is 40GB......

Yes you can clone to a smaller drive as long as the contents of your drive to be cloned does not exceed the capacity of the drive receiving the clone.

To illustrate see the attached pics. MyMBP has two 250 GB partitions for Mac OS X and Win 7/ BootCamp. I

clone The Mac to a 160Gb partition on an external USB drive. The drive could be cloned to a 40GB external if I wished. There is a discrepancy of size in GB between the original and cloned drives due to the large sleep image on the Mac drive which is not cloned.

THat's interesting, but on second thought, if CCC really is a "block-copy" backup system, then it makes no sense that you could clone a larger drive to a smaller one. How would it know that *none* of the files on your source drive are physically located on outer tracks..? (or however the disk is physically organized, there is not a 1:1 correspondence between an 80 GB drive and a 40GB one.)

Perhaps CCC checks if there are any files written outside the smaller drive's capacity and issues a warning if there are..? Or, if there are, moves them to e.g. inner tracks..? If so, then it's not a block-copy scheme as advertised.

Whatever. I'm just going to use Superduper instead.

Some info on SD & CCC in regards to defraging. The Hatter recomended this method to those people with disks too fragmented to allow installation a Boot Camp partition.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup tool, which can easily create a backup copy of your drive. Though it does not have a specific tool for defragging, it defrags on the backup process. This is an alternative that you can try if you don’t want to wait for a long time for the defragging to finish. Backup the internal hard disk with an internal drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. Use Disk Utility to erase the content of the internal drive. Clone the external drive to the internal drive using this program.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup tool, which can easily create a backup copy of your drive. Though it does not have a specific tool for defragging, it defrags on the backup process. This is an alternative that you can try if you don’t want to wait for a long time for the defragging to finish. Backup the internal hard disk with an internal drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. Use Disk Utility to erase the content of the internal drive. Clone the external drive to the internal drive using this program.

The following is from: Carbon Copy Cloner's Transition to a Commercial Product

Can I continue using the older version that is "donationware"?

Yes, absolutely. If you are currently using CCC and have not donated in the past, you are welcome to continue using any version up to and including 3.4.7 as long as you like without purchasing a license. Note, however, that previous versions of CCC are not qualified against Mountain Lion and we are no longer developing older versions of CCC. In addition, we offer limited support on a case-by-case basis. Choose "Update CCC..." from the Carbon Copy Cloner menu to see options for disabling the CCC software update checks.

You can download previous versions of CCC on our Downloads page.

If I donated for CCC in the past, will I have to purchase the new version?

No. To express our appreciation to all of the people who have sent a verifiable donation to Bombich Software prior to July 24, 2012, we will grant a registration code for CCC 3.5. If you are a previous donor and see a message about a 30-day trial, you can retrieve your registration code here.

Not sure, but I think the "free" version does not "add to clone" as commercial product does but instead makes new clone each time. Or maybe that was with SuperDuper at one point.

Either way ... there is a reason to pay and get the support.