Please, help me. Can you tell me step by step, how to do CCC bootable? Actually I have El Capitan 100% working. I did download a trial version of CCC, doing a clone of my ssd where El Capitan is. I don't understand how to do bootable the CCC ssd.
I'll tell you how I do it, and this has been working for me and pretty bulletproof. This may not be the best way, but I know it works. There are lots of ways to do this, but this one works for me.
- The first step is install Clover on the "new" drive, ie, the new empty, unformatted clone drive. When you do that, make sure you have set it up to be a UEFI bootable drive. If you don't know how to do that, check one of the many guides here which will show you how to do that.
- Next Expose the EFI partition on the current working boot drive that you are currently booting with (with EFI Mounter (available on this site) or any other utility - there are many that can do this, and there is also a way to do this via the command line), and copy the EFI directory. I put it on the desktop. Then I dismount the EFI partition. Just right click on the drive and choose "Eject".
Sometimes it will ask you to dismount additional drives. If it does, don't do it. This step is a convenience and is not required. Just dismount the EFI partition only, nothing else.
- Next, expose the EFI partition on "clone" drive, the drive you have just installed Clover on. Be careful not to confuse the two EFI partitions. If you were able to eject the first EFI partition on the existing current drive, this should be easy, as you should only have one exposed EFI partition to work with. But if you have two, it is very important to keep track of which one is which.
- On your new "clone" drive, on the EFI partition there, you should have an EFI directory. It should be mostly empty, with not a lot of files and Kexts on it. What I do is delete that EFI directory and copy the EFI directory that is on my desktop and put it right on the "clone" EFI partition. Essentially, you are replacing the EFI directory on the "clone" drive with the EFI directory from your current, working boot drive.
- Then, and only then, do I run Carbon Copy Cloner, cloning from the working boot drive to the new "clone" drive.
- When it's done, I test the new "clone" drive and boot to it to make sure I know it's bootable, and working.
As long as you don't change much in your EFI partition (like adding Kexts, or changing parameters), you only need to do this one time. Every other time you backup, as long as your EFI partition remains unchanged, you only have to run CCC.
So, that's one way to do it. Like I said, there are many other ways to do this. It's up to you to choose which works best for you, and your situation.