Please help!! Can not back up

[pendragon]

Dakota,

When I recommended the Spotlight trick (above) to Al, under similar conditions to yours, it worked like a charm. Sorry it did not work for you.

There are widespread reports of backups failing to complete when FileVault is enabled. Are you using FileVault?

[chriskleeman]

Dakota, maybe a stoopid question, but,

Is it possible your back-up drive is failing??? If you've got a 120 GB drive that is now showing 58 MB available after zeroing and reformatting, I'd think that might be a possibility, unless I'm missing something in your thread.

Have you run Disk Utility and Techtool again to see what they tell you about the drive capacity after you wiped it the last time? How about the S.M.A.R.T status of the drive in question?

HTH,

Chris K

[krissel]

IAWC.

If the drive to which you are backing up has been reformatted (zeroed) and it still shows only 58MB of space there is something terribly wrong with it. I don't think I'd trust it anymore.

[tacit]

QUOTE(dakota @ Aug 12 2007, 02:54 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do own the full version of SuperDuper - just have rarely used it.  I managed to copy half my drive before I got a message that SuperDuper could not continue, my drive was full.  Ludicrous!  I wiped the drive again, zeroed all data, and still show a drive with over 58 MB on it?  Can anyone tell me why?  I have not tried to copy again so far.

If you reformatted the drive, you should see that there is still stuff on it. The stuff on it is the disk directory.

It is not clear from your message, but I believe that what you are saying is "I zeroed the drive. After i zeroed the drive, the drive said that there was 58 MB of stuff on it and 117 GB free." Is that correct?

[Paddy]

Seems to be some confusion here. I (and Tacit) both read the Dakota's post as saying that there is 117 GB available on the drive and that 58MB is used - not that there is only 58MB AVAILABLE. As Tacit points out, the disk directory, created when you reformat the disk, does take a little bit of space (in this case, it appears to be 58 MB).

So...unless Dakota meant that there was only 58MB free space, there is nothing apparently wrong with the formatting and SuperDuper should be able to back up to this disk IF and ONLY IF this disk is larger than the partition or drive from which the backup is being made.

Any further news, Dakota??

[krissel]

Ah, rereading I got confused as to what was on the drive and what was space. If there is 58MB of files then that's OK. And showing 117 G is normal for a 120 G drive as they never are quite the size they use for selling purposes.

You say you used TechToolPro.  On your external or on your main drive? Do you have Disk Warrior?

jw's list of steps is what I'd do if you can't clone your drive to the external after the zeroing. Your problem my lie with your boot drive and not the external so it needs to be checked and is best done while booted from another partition or drive. Once you are booted to another drive you can run TTPro and Disk Warrior on your main drive. You can also do this from their respective CDs but that is slower.
Your directory may be so screwed up that SuperDuper and Retrospect can't find all files and hang.

[Al]

QUOTE(pendragon @ Aug 12 2007, 10:57 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dakota,

When I recommended the Spotlight trick (above) to Al, under similar conditions to yours, it worked like a charm. Sorry it did not work for you.

Maybe Dakota didn't even try it.  Good advise anyways, Harv.  THX!

[dakota]

okay, thanks to you all.  After two days of trial and error, and running disk repair from the DVD ( found one small error), I still couldn't back up to my backup drive, so I tried backing up to my Maxtor firewire, and SuperDuper managed to pull it off.  Only took five hours!  In retrospect (pardon the pun), I all of a sudden realized how stupid I was - HD and Maxtor are 160 GB, and I have almost 125 GB on it- and here I was trying to back up to a 120 GB drive!  I do think, as someone suggested above, that the LACIE 120 is "iffY" at best, anyway, so I am going to get rid of it, and buy a new 250 or 200.  Anyone have any suggestions on manufacturer?  I have had problems with both Maxtor and LACie, but my Maxtor seems to be functioning well at this point.

[Paddy]

My standard reply is a Seagate drive (for the 5 year warranty) and a FW/USB 2.0 enclosure with an Oxford chipset. Nothing to putting it together; usually all you need is a screwdriver.

http://www.otherworldcomputing.com for various enclosures.

This one is kind of neat - it has extra ports. A bit bigger of course...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/FWU2MSV2/

Or simple and cheap:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Triumph/TT736U2F/

Another option for SATA drives (which are probably a better bet, allowing for forward compatibility and they're often cheaper now than the their ATA forbearers):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817193021

And for drives, NewEgg has always been excellent.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148261 - Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA drive

Just make sure you match the enclosure to the drive - whether it's ATA/IDE or SATA. They're NOT interchangeable. I'd go with SATA these days.

Also check out dealmac.com - there are a couple of pre-assembled external drives for very similar prices. What you won't tend to find for that sort of price however are SATA drives or 5 year warranties on the drives. (I don't think I've ever seen an external pre-assembled drive with anything more than a two-year warranty, which is one of the reasons I'd never buy one!)

[jwboyd]

dakota

We're all happy that you got things worked out.

I think we all assumed that your backup drive had sufficient capacity. As also, apparently, did you.

Like the guy says, "We live and learn, and then when we die we forget it all."

Best regards,
Joe

[chriskleeman]

I've never done anything like that!

Glad to hear that you figured it out.

Chris K