Late Monday, Carbon Copy Cloner, the shareware favorite for drive cloning operations by Mike Bombich, has released version 3.1. The new version, a 2.1 megabyte download, adds the following changes:
-Implemented rsync 3.0.0 to provide even greater fidelity when backing up using the incremental backup method.
-Improved the wording of options in the interface to make it more clear what CCC is doing.
-Implemented "bootability" checks -- CCC now reports whether the backup volume will be bootable based upon the options you have chosen.
CCC now offers a dialog box to opt out of a backup task that is scheduled to occur when the target volume is reattached.
-Resolved an issue in which an existing disk image selected as the target would not get mounted during a "Copy everything" backup.
-When creating a new sparse image during a "Copy everything" backup, the capacity of the disk image is now the same as the capacity of the source volume rather then just enough space to accommodate the files that will be copied.
-Resolved issues with installing the Authentication Credentials installer package from multiple source machines on a single target machine.
-Adjusted permissions of the archival folders so that admin users can modify their contents.
-Adjusted permissions of target disk image so that admin users can mount it read-write.
-Resolved an issue in which scheduled tasks would not run upon reboot (Leopard only).
-Resolved an issue in which a backup using the "Copy everything from source to target" method would fail soon after erasing the target volume.
-CCC no longer allows the scheduling of tasks that erase the target volume.
-Fixed a regression in which the "invisible" flag is not preserved when performing a backup with the "Copy everything" method (Leopard only).
-CCC no longer errantly warns the user that specifying "/" as the path on a remote source volume will overwrite the boot volume.
-Resolved an issue in which specifying a path with a space in it would cause CCC to back up to the wrong location on a remote Macintosh, potentially resulting in data loss.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0 has been released as uncrippled donation-ware (if you like it, send along a few bucks, you'll get the fully functional version either way) and is still one of the best shareware utilities on the market. The application requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run.

If you've tried the new version and have either positive or negative feedback, let us know in the comments or forums.