Problem with Carbon Copy Cloner

[dakota]

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to back up by HD. I ran into a weird problem today, had my Eudora app revert to a sponsored mode, with all my settings and mail gone and all the toolbar buttons a generic "file" icon and when I went to install from the backup, discovered the same thing had happened on the other drive. I have restored Eudora at this point, with SOME help from Eudora tech, but mostly on my own (!) but now I see that everything in my "Home" folder, which also includes Eudora settings, seems to ne the identical application on both drives.  On a "get info", both folders and the items in them read "Macintosh Hard Drive" instead of the backup drive reading as a second drive.  This seems to be the case only for the Home folder, everything else on the backup drive reading "Backup drive". Whatever I do on my HD has the same result on my backup drive! What happens now is that if I trash a folder on the HD, it disappears from the backup drive in this group of folders- therefore I do not really have a backup of all this information.  Why did this happen and what can I do about it?  I managed to restore mail from the System 9 Eudora folder, but I should be able to restore from the backup.  I plan to wip this second drive and use Retrospect, but now, if I do wipe it, I will wipe all this info from my main HD.  Help!!!!

[dakota]

I need to modify my information.  if I check the "Users" folders, one reads HD, the other the backup.  It is only when I click on "Home" on both drives that I find they both read "Macintosh HD" amd if I move one folder to the desktop, the other disappears. Is this the way it is supposed to be on "Home" or should they be independent of each other since one is supposed to be a backup copy?

[ljocampo]

dakota:  I do remember posting to you that you can't have two identical accounts on the same machine.  You need different names for each account.

[dakota]

Okay, let'e see if I have this straight.  What you are saying is that I can not make a copy of my home directory on another drive atached to my computer ( firewire) - that it will actually be the same entry, and that if I delete it on one drive it will delete from the other?  I did see, however, that if I go into "Users" on my HD and click on the two "home" icons, I do get one which says Macintosh Hard Drive and the other which reads Hard Drive Copy.  Since the contents are the same on the screen in the home directories and on the screen which I click on "Home" on the medubar, does that mean that all the contents from the "Users" file would also be deleted if I trashed the folders on the screen in the "Home" view?  If this is the case, how do I make a backup copy of all the files in the Users-Home folder???

[ljocampo]

dakota:

I can't give you the details (mainly because I don't know them well enough on OS X), but I do know you're going about this the hard way.  I would (and do use) retrospect desktop backup software.  It backs up everything I have to my external firewire drive without flaw (invisble link files, icons, permissions, and all), and it only backs up what has changed since your last backup.  You can even buy the cheaper retrospect express to do the same things, or if you have a .mac account, you can use Apple's backup software (Virex) for free.

[dakota]

Great - already ordered Retrospect.