Clone X - 3.3

So far I just tried Clone X3's function to burn a bootable DVD with one's choice of repair applications. The interface is attractive and easy to use. The disk image created is best burnt with Disk Utility as Clone X can sometimes fail at this last stage.

I added the following applications; Disk Utility, Clone X. Carbon Copy Cloner, Drive Genius, Diskwarrior and TechTool Pro 5.

The dvd booted o.k. taking the expected long time. All apps showed in their launcher window. When I tried them the following happened:
Disk Utilty - worked fine, as did CCC and Clone X.

Drive Genius needs to be V2.2.1 with "Enable animated user interface " switched off.
The last tip was provided by the fast and helpful support from Clone X.
Worked well with repair, permissions repair, rebuild and defrag.

TechToolPro 5 opened but did not respond.
Diskwarrior (not the latest version) gave an error message.

I hope Clone X developers will look into this as they cant help at this time.

But its great to have such a useful boot disk that works on my two desktops and MacBook Pro (all Intel)

I've tried Clone X in the past, but I downloaded the version 3 trial today to see if it had improved. Much to my dismay, it has not.

The first problem I noticed is that the installer DMG contains two PDF manuals. One claims to be French and the other English. However, both files are actually French. There is no English manual in spite of one PDF saying it is in English! I might expect this from immature software, but Clone X is not at version 3!

I then launched the app (not knowing what recommendations the manual has since I cannot read French). The interface seemed self-explanatory enough, so I thought I would do a test clone from my internal 120GB hard drive to my external 120GB firewire drive. I have made this type of clone before using Apple's Disk Utility in OS X. I had hoped Clone X might be faster, as Clone X, by its very name, is supposed to excel at cloning. However, it took well over 3 hours to clone just under 100GB of data (on my 1.7GHz G4 Mac).

I suppose I can live with a 3 hour cloning time for 100GB of data, but I had hoped that Clone X would make me a perfect clone. Disk Utility does a pretty good job, but some of my applications (like little Snitch and Adobe apps) sense that the disk has been cloned and then I have to re-register again. Sadly, Clone X makes a worse clone than Apple's Disk Utility. Upon completing the clone operation, I was presented with an Errors dialog. Clone X told me there were a total of 2193 errors. It then listed the following data, which I really don't know what to make of since the following numbers total more than 2193:

On File: 1493
On Folders: 6992
Others: 7

It then told me that Clone X couldn't set permissions on some files, couldn't modify some dates, and couldn't set correct file sizes -- which it says is a "critical error."

In light of the fact there is nothing fancy about my computer setup, I am greatly disappointed by this software. I would have expected a dedicated cloning application, especially at version 3.0, to have worked better than Apple's Disk Utility. But that is not the case with Clone X. And to think, this software costs nearly US$50!

User beware.

This is very user friendly. I really like how it is clear about what's going on. It looks great on top of all that and seems to work just fine. Cloning is a VERY VERY VERY serious subject. People who make these types of applications should not put them out until they are 100% sure that they work. I have a Master & Slave. I use the Slave for a monthly backup using SuperDuper. I also have a external firewire HD that is used for a backup every month. I've learned my lesson the hard way. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the fault in a backup application. So far this one looks OK. If this proves to be right on every single time, then it may replace my SuperDuper. I do like the look and feel of this much more. The bootCD and backup options are very cool. The price is cheap compared to loosing everything.

It's down right foolish to trust Carbon Copy Cloner. SuperDuper and BootCD is the only thing I trust. CCC has NO support at all, and has bugs up the wazoo. Everyone is trying to make a backup app, all but one can be trusted. I haven't tried this, but the reviews would have to be at least 4.5 stars before I would even think of it. The safest way to clone a HD is to use the Apple disk utilities. It's free, it's Apple, and it's right there waiting for you. If you have some smarts, you can even make a bootable CD.

and does it simply. No muss. No fuss. Both Clone'X and CCC do the job but do it differently. Is Clone'X worth $50? It depends on whether you need to clone to CD-R/RW or not. Maybe this will spur competition. And that can only mean that we -- the consumer -- will benefit.