Backups, Carbon Copy Cloner, and Time Machine

[tex77]

Hi, I have a few questions about Backups, Carbon Copy Cloner, and Time Machine. Any insight greatly appreciated!

I’ve been using Time Machine to backup the two Mac laptops in my house, and Carbon Copy Cloner for (non-versioned) bootable clones, weekly and before OS updates.

I’m now thinking of using CCC (and its SnapShots and/or SafetyNet?), for daily versioned backups too, instead of TM.

• Does TM have ANY advantages over CCC? Seems like some folks use both.
• Is it CCC’s SnapShots or SafetyNet that provides version history, like TM? I think SnapShots, but I’m also seeing otherwise.
• Does CCC (with SnapShots?) suggest the same storage needs as TM (generally 2-3x the source)? I assume so.

I’m also hoping to better understand if/how a CCC backup is used to recover a hosed internal start-up disk/volume, like from a failed OS update, or if AppleCare tells me to just re-install the OS to fix whatever bug they can't figure out. So, in Recovery …

• Would the “Re-install Monterey” option just leave my user/data volume untouched, so I wouldn’t even need to restore from the CCC backup (assuming the data volume is not also hosed)?
• Or would I need to erase (with Disk Utility) the entire Internal SSD (including the user/data volume), then re-install Monterey, and then use the CCC backup for Migration Assistant (in the fresh OS install)?

Thanks much!
T