HELP!!! Update failed...

[jchuzi]

Don't worry too much about the fragmentation of the directory. The OS pretty much takes care of finding things, despite fragmentation. So, a 10 doesn't mean a whole lot compared to 8. The important thing is directory damage, not fragmentation.

As to external hard drives, I have bought a lot of stuff from https://www.macsales.com (aka Other World Computing). Their staff is very knowledgeable and you could seek out their advice.

[Dreambird]

Jon, thanks for the hint re: 10.13... perhaps it would be a good idea to grab the Combo Updater and download it to keep around in case the App Store drops it? It appears you can get many older Combo Updaters from Apple to a point. 10.11.6 here:https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1885?viewlocale=en_CA&locale=en_CA
You do have to be running El Capitan to use the updater. It doesn't say that for High Sierra 10.13.6 so I think I may grab it and stash it on my HD. https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1970?locale=en_US
I believe I will need to run the El Capitan updater as some odd things don't seem quite right... niggly little things, for eg: I should have a Font folder in my home file and install new user specific files there. I don't have the folder... there is a hidden .fonts folder but that's it. For all I know though it could only apply to multi-user machines which mine is not.

[Dreambird]

Jon,
Unfortunately re: my external drive... it was much more than just fragmentation. I DID decide to rerun that backup on my MacBook and to the best of my knowledge it should have been the same as the other day, but I was confused from the start... it was the only backup from July 8 just as the other day however the time stamp on it had changed from 11.xPM to 1.xPM and after I restarted the MacBook freshly restored it is NOT quite the same as before. As I said some things are mostly "niggly" little things that don't seem to affect it one way or the other... I've not found anything serious yet... I hope it stays that way. I'm afraid I was much better at complete reformats of my PC running Win95 Win98 way back when than I ever was at the Macs. I liked the old Archive and Install feature which I did use. Reformatting the PC was so routine I had it down to system. I can't say I miss that at all but it's handy to know how to do a complete reformat.
As far as the external HD goes it either just became corrupted or it is indeed slowly dying. I suspect the latter. It IS an OWC drive... so that is one place I'll definitely check again, it's been awhile, maybe ask for some advice there. I've always liked any OWC external I've had so I agree they are good.

Anyway... I really am sick of this for today so will continue tomorrow as far as cleaning up and trying to straighten up the internal HD goes and then perhaps I may pick up the courage to consider trying the 10.13.x Combo Update. I'll grab it before it gets impossible to do.
Thanks again...

[jchuzi]

There's a little misunderstanding here. Apple keeps the Combo Updaters around virtually forever. That means that, for example, if you use 10.11, you can always get that updater. That's only helpful if you stay at 10.11. You cannot, for example, erase the drive and opt to install 10.11 (the Combo only works on existing installations and doesn't install from scratch). The only fresh OS currently available from Apple is 10.13 and that will disappear when 10.14 is released.

Another point, in case there was a second misunderstanding: If you install 10.13, even though it may be called Clean Install, it is actually the same as the old Archive And Install.

You said "Anyway... I really am sick of this for today so will continue tomorrow as far as cleaning up and trying to straighten up the internal HD goes and then perhaps I may pick up the courage to consider trying the 10.13.x Combo Update. I'll grab it before it gets impossible to do." I think that you meant the 10.11 Combo, yes?

[Dreambird]

Jon,
Yes... you are right... sorry my bad! Oooppss! 
I mistook those combo updaters for the full thing... I've since realized they are exactly what you say. I DO have the entire installer for 10.11.6 though... I downloaded it from the App Store and after I upgraded to that from Snow Leopard I saved the installer, zipped it and stashed it in my Utilities folder. It's around 6.2GB. I believe, hopefully I can do the same with 10.13.6... it's a 2 hour download. What I need to know is if I can download it and save it BUT NOT let it install right now? I cannot for the live of me remember if El Cap. gave me the choice to cancel, wasn't paying a lot of attention as I just installed it, that was my intention anyway.
I'm not quite ready to upgrade just yet but 10.13 is what I'd like so I can have some 32-bit apps a bit longer. Apparently Mojave won't allow it anymore, so I heard? I am thinking about it... soon, which is why I mentioned grabbing the combo updater but in case they let 10.14 out before I upgrade I've got the full download from the App Store, hopefully. I mentioned grabbing the combo updater for 10.13.6 just before realizing it wouldn't do me any good. If I want to stay with 10.11.6 for awhile yet then the combo updater they have may be good enough to freshen up mine.
In any case I'm glad I kept the El Cap. installer... it was a hint someone had mentioned... saving the installer once you're done with it.
I hope this made better sense! Really, all I NEED for my 10.11.6 is the combo updater however I want to grab the full installer for 10.13.6 from the store and just stash it w/o installing right now.

[Dreambird]

Oh... before I forget... one of the "niggly" little issues I referred to before is actually normal I think. I've never noticed before because I've never tried to rename any of the folders involved but I noticed some in the home Library>Preferences and most folders in the home directory will not allow a short double click to highlight them... you can copy the name if you wanted but you cannot rename them. So apparently not being able to highlight them is normal. A Ctrl + Click confirms no option to rename.

[jchuzi]

You should be able to make a bootable copy of the 10.13 installer without actually installing it. The instructions can be found by reading How to create a bootable macOS High Sierra installer drive. Note that I have never done this myself, but the critical step seems to be to quit the installer (scroll down for the appropriate sentence) before letting the installation proceed.

[Paddy]

Chiming in a bit late on this but re: the external HD, I'd highly recommend that you do one of two things:

1. Buy an USB 3.0 external enclosure and pop that drive into it. Get rid of the potentially problematic connections (and FW is slower than USB 3) If you think the drive itself is dying - and if it's older than 5 years you should rotate it out anyway - they all fail eventually.
2. Buy a nice new Seagate Backup Plus portable USB 3 drive. That would be my preference - then you can have Time Machine on the old drive and a daily or weekly clone on the Seagate.

Amazon.ca and Newegg.ca (and even staples.ca) often have these drives on sale - they've gotten ridiculously cheap, and they're great little drives. I have 3 or 4 of them, kids have another couple. I wouldn't buy it from OWC - great company of course, but we Canadians are paying through the nose for anything from the US because of the exchange; plus there is international shipping etc. Unless you're looking for a specialty item not available here, stick to Canadian companies (or Canadian branches of US companies!)

BTW - I always tell people that they need two backups - a clone (CCC or SuperDuper - my current fave is CCC as the interface is better, IMHO, though I feel like a traitor to Dave Nanian for saying that) and a TM backup, and that if you're only doing one, the clone is more important, because it's bootable.

4GB (which you could partition and use for TM and cloning if you want) is $137 CAN
2GB is 106 (newegg)
1GB is $69.99 (amazon)

Bummer about Mojave - my MBP just squeaks under the wire system requirement-wise (mid 2012) and I really don't want to have to replace it any time soon as it's still running like a top and fast, with an SSD and 16GB of RAM. Hope I can keep it going for another year or two; doing web design I DO need to have all current OS' and browsers - not being up to date isn't really an option.

[Dreambird]

OK... I looked in my cupboard and there IS an OWC Elite Pro in there, hooked it up FW to TB via adapter and it SAYS it's 4TB, so I'm confused as to why that drive which twice as big as the one I've been using is under there. Does it work? Whatever, I don't know... it appears to but it has 2 partitions which via Disk Utility will NOT let me erase the one called "Clone". It's to enable journaling under the file menu. That's grayed out so I'm not sure what's with it. I doubt I would have stashed it if if worked for this machine but who knows?
Will try DW.

[Dreambird]

I believe it's trashed... No idea why I put it in the cupboard... it will not let me set Journaling on it so as to make it one partition. It went through DW OK... I know I have another OWC somewhere but it's only 250GB. This one I not showing the right size it could well be 4TB up the smaller partition is NOT 6GB.

[Dreambird]

There are OWC external drives on Amazon.ca:
https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D7204527011&field-keywords=owc+USB+external+drive&rh=n%3A667823011%2Cn%3A2404990011%2Cn%3A7204527011%2Ck%3Aowc+USB+external+drive
Not a single clue what I want though... 

[Dreambird]

Would this work? It appears to be what I've got I think:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
It has the FW ports but also USB 3 which I "think" I have although I don't have a cord like that nor do I have a port like that. My USB ports of which there are only 2 so I can't spare one full time look like the standard USB I'm used to, bigger, wider.

My system info:

USB 3.0 Bus:

  Capacity:   2.06 GB (2,055,208,960 bytes)
  Removable Media:   Yes
  BSD Name:   disk2
  Host Controller Driver:   AppleUSBXHCIPPT
  Partition Map Type:   GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  PCI Device ID:   0x1e31
  PCI Revision ID:   0x0004
  PCI Vendor ID:   0x8086
  Volumes:
DW:
  Capacity:   67.6 MB (67,584,000 bytes)
  Available:   34.5 MB (34,488,320 bytes)
  Writable:   Yes
  File System:   HFS+
  BSD Name:   disk2s1
  Mount Point:   /Volumes/DW
  Content:   Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:   F3DA2EBB-2B47-3E5B-9CF2-F9BDD97A51AC
DiskWarrior Recovery:
  Capacity:   1.78 GB (1,782,210,560 bytes)
  File System:   HFS+
  BSD Name:   disk2s2
  Content:   Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:   EE0F8E92-2B14-311D-8E76-ACD26561C968

Mass Storage:

  Product ID:   0x6387
  Vendor ID:   0x058f  (Alcor Micro, Corp.)
  Version:   1.01
  Serial Number:   06309E14
  Speed:   Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer:   Generic
  Location ID:   0x14200000 / 3
  Current Available (mA):   1000
  Current Required (mA):   200
  Extra Operating Current (mA):   0
  Capacity:   2.06 GB (2,055,208,960 bytes)
  Removable Media:   Yes
  Detachable Drive:   Yes
  BSD Name:   disk2
  Partition Map Type:   GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  Volumes:
DW:
  Capacity:   67.6 MB (67,584,000 bytes)
  Available:   34.5 MB (34,488,320 bytes)
  Writable:   Yes
  File System:   HFS+
  BSD Name:   disk2s1
  Mount Point:   /Volumes/DW
  Content:   Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:   F3DA2EBB-2B47-3E5B-9CF2-F9BDD97A51AC
DiskWarrior Recovery:
  Capacity:   1.78 GB (1,782,210,560 bytes)
  File System:   HFS+
  BSD Name:   disk2s2
  Content:   Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:   EE0F8E92-2B14-311D-8E76-ACD26561C968

Photosmart 8200 series:

  Product ID:   0xc202
  Vendor ID:   0x03f0  (Hewlett Packard)
  Version:   1.00
  Serial Number:   MY55H1X0Y80459
  Speed:   Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer:   HP
  Location ID:   0x14100000 / 2
  Current Available (mA):   1000
  Current Required (mA):   2
  Extra Operating Current (mA):   0
  1284 Device ID:   MFG:HP;MDL:Photosmart 8200 series;CMD:MLC,PCL,PML,DW-PCL,DESKJET,DYN;1284.4DL:4d,4e,1;CLS:PRINTER;DES:8250;SN:MY55H1X0Y80459;S:038008C4840010210378cb0000041f8000046f8000047f8000044f8000048f8000045f80000;Z:0102,050000090151850125c50125c50125c50125c50125c5,0600,070000000000000000000000000000;

Believe the Printer is indeed running on USB 3... the part that plugs in the printer resembles that little USB connection. Surprises me though... if you want to talk ancient, it's that printer... maybe 12 to 14 years old and still works like a top. Until lately I've still gotten updates for it. To get a new one though is coming... after the external HD.

[Dreambird]

I have apparently USB 3.1

Or.... maybe this one... bigger, but cheaper and it says it has an extra USB port? That would make the drive being USB 3 possible easily.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3UH7T3.0/

This is a good deal for shipping however I HATE Purolator... prefer FedEx... bonus being not so likely to get taken severely to the customs cleaners.
Special $12.95 delivery to Canada on orders of at least $199.00 USD when Purolator is selected for freight.

[Dreambird]

BTW... this same machine is available from Amazon.ca but the base price is higher... probably do to the exchange. However one could save a load on shipping and Amazon shipments have rarely been nailed by customs on me.

Actually no customs... that's Amazon.ca. but the drive is much more...

[Dreambird]

OK... 4.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro USB 3 with USB+1 Storage Solution
Item Number: OWCME3UH7T4.0

from OWC... shipping with Purolator... customs prepaid... $224.34 US - $295.48 approx CDN

Cheapest shipping including prepaid customs. FedEx acceptable shipping but no prepaid custom. Don't know how fast it gets here... Purolator are dips... they drive my sis and bro-in-law nuts at their store but??