Keep bootable backup with rsync I've ditched Carbon Copy Cloner now that it went commercial, well I felt guilty about using a closed source application anyways. 

What rsync options do you prefer when maintaining your bootable backups? 

rsync -avhHXR --delete --progress --hfs-compression --protect-decmpfs --stats --exclude=/Volumes / /Volumes/Backup


Just by way of explanation : Any large recursive backup wants the archive option -a of course.  And ideally the -H option for hard-links.  We need -R and --exclude=/Volumes since we're using / as the source.  We want --delete to delete files not present on the source.  All the option -vh, --progress, and --stats only impact the display. And -X, --hfs-compression, and --protect-decmpfs preserve various HFS+ features.  

Add a -n for testing before running the actual backup of course.

Just a few questions : 

In Linux, you might want -S for sparse files, but afaik HFS+ lacks sparse files anyways.  I'd leave out -A too since HFS+ lacks acls too.  I presume that's correct?

Are there any benefits to --inplace?  Would it reduce wear?  It's slightly risky if the transfer breaks perhaps.  It conflicts with -S in Linux, btw.

Am I missing anything particularly useful here?  

Anything about making a new disk bootable that isn't bootable already?
Just found an open source backup script Counterpart (jedda.me) which does exactly this, seemingly does stuff CCC misses too.