"Cannot find target volume ("null")"

[patrickmast]

Hi,

I can't use SuperDuper! anymore. It always says "SuperDuper! cannot find target volume "(null)"

I can press cancel, but the message wont go away.

What can I do?

Patrick

[dnanian]

Hi, Patrick. Quit SD!, then delete the "Saved Settings" folder in Library/Application Support/SuperDuper! (off your Home folder). Then, give it another try.

[patrickmast]

Hi, Patrick. Quit SD!, then delete the "Saved Settings" folder in Library/Application Support/SuperDuper! (off your Home folder). Then, give it another try.Works fine. Thanks!

Patrick Mast
http://www.WinFakt.be

[supermonkey]

This keeps happening to me every week when I need to backup my Mac. I tried deleting the folder mentioned above, but that only removes the error message. To get SuperDuper to work, I have to reboot my Mac.

Is this a bug? Any ideas what may be causing this?

[dnanian]

You quit SD! and removed this folder, and SD! wouldn't start properly after that?

[supermonkey]

You quit SD! and removed this folder, and SD! wouldn't start properly after that?

Correct. I had to restart my computer.

[dnanian]

That sounds to me more like a hardware issue, supermonkey. Perhaps a misbehaving peripheral/drive isn't exposing itself to the OS properly?

[gerryleonidas]

I had the same problem. Tracked it down to using ExpanDrive. Quit that, and SD works fine.

[dnanian]

I have ExpanDrive running on my system without generating this kind of problem...

[Manu Chao]

I too just ran into this issue ("SuperDuper! cannot find target volume "(null)" appearing, and the inability to dismiss the dialogue box, even though the menubar was still working in SD). For me too, deleting the settings folder, removed that message, but the buttons in SD were still greyed out.
Quitting ExpanDrive fixed this.

But, I have been running ExpanDrive regularly (though not constantly) for at least half a year and SD worked fine all the time. There has been no new version of ExpanDrive (nor SD, nor the OS) lately. So, this is definitely an issue triggered only by a certain set of circumstances. But is also definitely related to something ExpanDrive does or cause.

[dnanian]

Does it happen when ExpanDrive is running but no volume is mounted?

[Manu Chao]

At that moment, ExpanDrive had one mounted volume. I did not try it with ExpanDrive running but no volumes mounted, ie, I started SD before I restarted ExpanDrive. Currently SD is running and I have restarted ExpanDrive but not yet mounted a volume (and SD is cloning away fine at the moment). Incidentally, SD reverted to doing the not-so-smart-full-copy clone. However, this might also be due to the deletion of the Settings folder which might have reset a few things.

[dnanian]

Yes, the settings folder would cause your options to reset to the defaults.

[Manu Chao]

I have now started up and run SD a couple of times (with ExpanDrive running and with and without actual drives mounted). In other words, I cannot reproduce the error (neither did I expect to).
And the full copy was as rather expected due to the settings being that way, which I changed now.

[nosillacast]

I backed up to this external drive (my offsite backup) last Wednesday. Today I fire up SD and it says it can't find the target volume. (note the volume is mounted, visible and I can navigate it). I'm used to that, seems to always happen when I switch from home to offsite backup, but today I can't cancel out. I can quit, but reopening SD gets the same effect. I have no Saved Settings in my Application Support/Superduper! folder.

I can get to the preferences, I tried telling it to forget the volumes, quit and go back in. That gets rid of the (null) message but both volume pulldowns are greyed out.

[dnanian]

Restart your Mac and this should clear up.

[Michael@wengam]

This just happened to me after upgrading to 10.6.6 (SD! not finding target volume, being greyed out).

Quitting SuperDuper! and restarting my computer fixed it.

[dnanian]

Thanks for the report. What seems to be happening is that the disk arbitration daemon in OSX gets messed up and starts tossing exceptions... restarting your Mac clears it up.