Helpful app: Carbon Copy Cloner

I'm editing some behind-the-scenes footage from the upcoming Focus Features... uh, feature, Greenberg (dir. Noah Baumbach, stars Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Mark Duplass). I'm handed a 500GB drive, from which I'm to grab interviews and other press kit-type assets. In total there's about 400GB of footage to transfer. There are a few of ways to copy this footage over:

  1. Just copy the files over, dummy
  2. Use Apple's built-in Disk Utility to "restore" their drive to my own
  3. Use a free app like Carbon Copy Cloner
  4. Use a paid app like... well, I forget

For testing purposes, I tried the first two methods; neither worked. Copying 400GB of footage is a bit more error-prone than your typical drag-and-drop operation, and given I'm copying it from a 2.5" USB drive, the process will take 4-5 hours (during which anything can go wrong). As for option four, the reason I can't remember which purchasable applications you can use for this kind of transfer is because Carbon Copy Cloner works perfectly... and it's free.

While I tend to use Time Machine for regular backups, CCC also offers nice selective backup options (meaning, it just updates files that have changed since your last transfer), which makes it handy for making multiple off-site backups to avoid catastrophic data loss.

Link: Carbon Copy Cloner

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