Author Topic: TechTool Pro 11 is now fully Mojave compatible.  (Read 2825 times)

elagache

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TechTool Pro 11 is now fully Mojave compatible.
« on: February 19, 2019, 11:46:56 PM »
Dear WeatherCat sys-admins,

For those of you who prefer to have a 3rd party set of utilities, you'll be glad to know that Micromat has recently released TechTool Pro 11:

https://www.micromat.com/products/techtool-pro

Micromat claims this version is fully Mojave compatible.

I have upgraded and installed it on both my main hard drive and my rescue partition of my Time Machine backup drive.  I haven't put it through many paces, but everything seemed to be working just fine.

I am running into some difficulties with all the additional security features of Mojave.  For the moment those features are keeping my ApplesScripts from running correctly.  I ran into another unexpected issue when creating my Rescue drive.  By default, Mojave will not allow you to boot off of any external drive.  It can be changed by booting from the macOS recovery drive, but that could be a problem if your internal hard drive suffers a catastrophic failure.  At the moment, the Mojave security features with respect to external hard drives is all or nothing.  It would seem a lot smarter to be able to designate particular external drives which you give permission to your Mac to boot on.  That way, you can have rescue devices created for your Mac, but bad guys would nonetheless be thwarted in attempting to boot your Mac with any drives they might have handy.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Blicj11

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Re: TechTool Pro 11 is now fully Mojave compatible.
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2019, 06:41:31 AM »
I know Mojave allows you to boot off of a CCC cloned external drive because I have done that.
Blick


Felix

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Re: TechTool Pro 11 is now fully Mojave compatible.
« Reply #2 on: February 20, 2019, 10:41:52 AM »
I know Mojave allows you to boot off of a CCC cloned external drive because I have done that.


Absolutely. I've used SuperDuper! for years.

wurzelmac

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Re: TechTool Pro 11 is now fully Mojave compatible.
« Reply #3 on: February 20, 2019, 04:10:42 PM »
No problem to boot from SuperDuper! backups, too. Just want to tell, because SD is my favorite backup client.  ;)
Reinhard


elagache

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Only for super-deluxe Macs with T2 chip. (Was: TechTool Pro 11)
« Reply #4 on: February 20, 2019, 09:48:56 PM »
Dear Blick, Felix, Reinhard, and WeatherCat seeker's of higher Mac security (or what passes for it . . . . )

I know Mojave allows you to boot off of a CCC cloned external drive because I have done that.

 [wink] . . . . Sufferin' succotash!  What's the matta' with ya!' Trying to force me to read the instructions or somethin' . . ! . . . .  lol(1)

So okay, not understanding too clearly what happened to me I did wander a bit on the World Wide Web and found this Apple Technical Support piece:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198

It turns out there is a new fancy bit of software called the Startup Security Utility, but it only works with new Macs that Apple's new T2 security chip.  Obviously my new Mac mini does have this chip.  So I don't think it matters what software you use, you'll run into the same problem if you have a new Mac with the T2 chip.  Unfortunately, that only deepens my complaint.  If Apple went to all the trouble to come up with a new chip to manage this sort of security, they should have taken the time to make it possible to "bless" some external drives so that you could rescue yourself, but prevent any bad-guy's drives from connecting.

Oh well, . . . . Edouard

Blicj11

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Re: TechTool Pro 11 is now fully Mojave compatible.
« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2019, 07:25:25 AM »
Thanks for this info Edouard; I didn't know about this security feature on the new Macs as I don't have one. Yet.
Blick