Western Digital My Book drives and SuperDuper
 

OK, I have been a long time user of CCC. After 2 HD crashes in the last 18 months I decided that I would rather use an external HD than a second internal HD for backups. Therefore, I bought the WD My Book Pro (3 interfaces including FW800).

My problem is that this drive goes to sleep if not accessed regularly. CCC will not wake it up to perform a scheduled backup. After reading about other backup utilities, I found Superduper. I downloaded it and really like the interface and abilities. However, it seems I must pay for it before I can schedule a backup. I don't mind paying for the software but I'd rather not buy it to find out it will not wake up an external drive either.

Will superduper wake up an external drive when a backup is scheduled? My internal drive is set to never sleep. Looking forward to a response - I really need to start getting backups again!

I've got one I'm going to try -- so I may, in the next 10 days, be able to let you know.

As I understand, with an Intel Mac, the two 250MB drives can't be a joined into a RAID. Each is seen as individual drive. Correct?

This is fine with me as I want to format each drive as HFS+.

HERE'S MY QUESTIONS

After saving from a Mac using SD -- if I want to be able to boot from the saved OS -- what determines if a boot can be performed?

1) Does the MyBook have the correct FireWire chipset?

2) If I partition a drive into 2 or 3 "sub-partitions" can each sub-partition be bootable OR can there only be ONE bootable partition per drive?

3) If I partitioned one of the drives into 2 "sub-partitions" can 1 partition be bootable and the other be for data only?

I don't understand how the drive could go to sleep in a way that wouldn't let it "wake" -- that's really a function of the OS, and not the application... we don't really have a way to "wake" the drive!

So in essence, you're saying that the drive should automatically 'wake' when the backup starts?

I just opened SuperDuper and got a message stating that it could not find the target drive and to mount it. But the drive does show up in the dropdown list. The drive also appears on my desktop so it really is 'mounted'.

Is there anything I can do to get this to work?
Running a PPC G5 with OS 10.4.10

If it says it can't find the target, it's because the target's low-level id (UUID/GUID) has changed. Reselect it in the pop-up, quit and restart and it should restore as expected.

So, I need to select the target, quit SuperDuper, Restart the Mac and everything should be OK from then on?

The external drive has never disappeared from my desktop so how can the low-level id (UUID/GUID) change?

Will SuperDuper perform a scheduled backup since I am having this problem? Any resolutions? Can I use a script in the before copy of the advanced tab to 'mount' the drive? I really need to be sure this app will work before purchasing.

Simply erasing the drive outside of SD! will change its low-level ID. So, yes, if you do that (and just restart SD!, not the Mac), it should be fine; give that a try.

"This problem" -- namely the UUID change -- shouldn't happen at all unless you erase/change the drive at a low-level outside of SD! itself. (We preserve the UUID if you do an erase-then-copy inside of SD itself.)

You haven't yet talked about a drive being mounted/unmounted. Are you trying to unmount the drive?

I have today brought a WD My Book Premium (dual interface). I have just evaluated SD, whilst I was busy ready about "my first backup" the drive powered down. When I finally got round to pressing the copy button the drive powered up again and the backup proceeded.

After the clone I successfully booted from the My Book drive, so add me to using the WD My Book without any problems.

I was so impressed I have now registered SD!

Thanks, hadleyhope!

Yes, but did the scheduled backup run? i.e. did it wake the drive and successfully perform a backup?

I'm going to try to run a backup again today and see if SD remembers the drive exists when I open it afterwards.

No, I really don't want to mount/unmount the drive. Is there an advantage to unmount a drive when it is designed to go to sleep if not accessed regularly?

Well, it ensures it's not available on the desktop, which can be an advantage, yes.

I think that even though the backup HD shows on the desktop, I need to somehow mount it before SD runs. Can I have SD run a shell script (Advanced tab) to mount the drive before it begins its copying? If so, how would I create the script?

No, you don't need to "mount" it if it's on the desktop. It's already mounted.

I don't feel as if I am conveying my problem correctly so I will try again.

I have an external FW800 drive that goes to sleep due to it's firmware. This info was found/surmised by others on the Western Digital website. This is either a bug or perhaps by design to prevent it from overheating - again a design issue.

Anyway, the HD shows up on the desktop but is actually asleep when I want to perform a scheduled backup. My last post was to determine a way to 'mount' it again so that it would be accessed and thus wake up before SD started trying to copy. Is this not a viable workaround? The OS is set to never put the HD's to sleep so the booted drive is awake. I was hoping to use the scriptable portion on the Advanced tab of SD to run a script to mount the drive. If this is possible, how would I write/create/store the script?

Thanks for your continued assistance.

EDIT: I am assuming that SD won't 'wake' the drive since Carbon Copy Cloner and Silverkeeper won't. The drive is 'mounted' but unavailable since it is asleep. I need to know if SD will 'wake' a mounted drive either by itself or by executing a script before copying. If it will I will register and purchase a copy. I just don't want to purchase a copy and it not work for my situation.

Having it spin down shouldn't be a problem. It should just spin up again when accessed. If it's visible on the desktop, it's mounted.

So SD will wake the drive?

As I've said, it certainly should -- drives spin down all the time, and the OS wakes them when they're accessed.

Sorry for the delay, I just wanted to make sure a couple of scheduled backups had run.

SuperDuper woke up the My Book drive just fine, I had set the energy perfs to wake the machine 15 minutes before SuperDuper was due to run so that any open apps had settled down, i.e. Mail and news reader had finished a refresh.

The only niggle I have is that it is not simple to see that the scheduled operation is successfull (though there is a quick Growl notification). The log only details interactive operations.

Martin

If you're using a WD MyBook it will work fine.

I use one as you want to and it's all cool

matt

In the Growl preference pane, you should be able to configure messages from SD to be "sticky", so that they do not automatically disappear.

Thanks for everyone's reply. I'll purchase it this week and get the scheduled backups started this week.

OK, I did not know that Growl did sticky messages per application/message category. It is a bit confusing though to open SD, view the log and not see details about the last "operation" (if that operation is scheduled).

Well, you will see the scheduled operation if you access the log from the scheduled copies window -- that way, if you have three copies scheduled, you can review all of them.

Yes, but you have to click the Schedule... button to get to that window, and the first thing that appears is a drop down sheet as though you are setting a new schedule, which if you just want to see the log's you have to cancel.

It would be nice from the main window to have a menu option to view any logs.

Anyway, I have set a sticky Growl notification for failed scheduled copies which is good enough for me.


Thanks

Actually, no, you don't -- you can choose Window > Scheduled Copies to get there, and if you leave the window open, we restore it when you exit and resume...

Many thanks.

OK where is the Growl preference pane?

On my system, the Growl preference pane is under Other in the main System Preferences application (Apple menu). It has several anchors (tabs).

Growl Preferences screen shots and documentation

The Applications tab should have a list of applications, including at least SuperDuper!. When you click on SuperDuper!, the list at the bottom should show a list of notifications that SuperDuper! might send: Scheduled Copy Succeeded, Copy Succeeded, Scheduled Copy Failed, Copy Failed. When the check box in the Sticky column shows a check, that type of notification will always be sticky. When it is unchecked, that notification will never be sticky. When it shows a dash/minus, it will be sticky only if the application requests stickyness.

OK, now I figured out that Growl is an application that needed to be downloaded and installed. I got the latest version (1.1). Your documentation was for 0.7.4 and the app has changed a lot. I think I have it set up properly. Will know tomorrow morning.

Thanks

Yes, I see that there is a new version. To be fair, the documentation/screenshots to which I linked are effectively only a few days out of date. That new 1.1 release is only a couple of days old, and until then the UI looked the same as it did in 0.7.4.

The new notification UI sure makes it difficult to get an overview of the settings and ensure consistency. I liked the old table view better. Maybe it was confusing, but I find the new UI to be a bit too verbose and click-intensive.

I didn't realize 1.1 was just a few days old. I believe I like the layout in your documentation better too.

In my Growl list there are 4 notifications for SD. I've set them all to "Stay on Screen" - Always. The 4 are Copy Failed, Copy Succeeded, Scheduled Copy Failed and Scheduled Copy Succeeded.

I have chosen "Sticky" and yet I don't see the notifiations the next morning. Choosing Sticky, checks a box on the General tab - "leave notifications on screen after ____ seconds of inactivity". The default is 30.

The backup did run the past 2 days but I don't see the notifiation the next morning after I wake the monitor. Do I have something set wrong?

Er, the documentation to which I linked is just from the Growl web site. I do not do anything for the Growl development team, so it cannot really be called mine.

Anyway, scheduled backups seem to reliably produce Growl notifications for me. In the Growl preferences for SuperDuper! I changed them all to "Always" "Stay on Screen" and they did just fine. I suppose it could be a problem with new installations of Growl 1.1 (I upgraded from 0.7.4 when you mentioned that there was a new version). Double check that the notifications have the Enabled checkbox checked, and that "Hide all notifcations" is unchecked in the General "tab" of Growl's preferences.

Edit: Also, if your schedule was originally created over a year ago, you may need to reschedule your backup: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/s...5&postcount=27

You also might try something else that uses Growl, to see if that works. Since you might not have any Growl-enabled applications installed, you could just try running this little bit of AppleScript in Script Editor:
That should pop up a Growl notification that has SuperDuper!'s icon and uses the specified title and description text. If you play around with this script, the application name and "with name" must be from an application that has already registered with Growl.

<<I do not do anything for the Growl development team, so it cannot really be called mine.>>

I didn't mean to imply it was "your" documentation. I meant your doumentation as to the doumentation you linked to.

I set up the schedule this past weekend so it being over a year isn't a problem.

All notifications are Enabled.
All set to Always Stay on Screen
Hide is unchecked
Leave notifiations on screen after 30s of inactivity is checked. It seems that this checks itself when "Always Stay on Screen" is selected on the Appliations tab.

Display Options tab has a duration slider. It is currently set at 10s (the maximum listed). However, one would think that the Always stay on screen would override this setting.

Thanks for the Applescript code. It only displays the Growl for 10s. I'm going to restart my Mac and see if the Growl is displayed tomorrow.

Check your display style: Bezel, Music Video, and Nano do not work with "Stay On Scre
 

Well, at least we know that Growl is working since the AppleScript is able to trigger a notification.

Based on that, I found a post in the Growl forum that says some display styles do not support the sticky/"stay on screen" option.

I tested the display styles in my installation and found that Bezel, Music Video, and Nano do not seem to support sticky notifications. MailMe and Speech do not do screen-based displays so they do not support sticky notifications either. On my system that left AboveTheNight, Brushed, Bubbles, Candybars (my usual setting), Crystal, iCal, NotifyOS9, NotifyOSX, Plain, Pseudo-Code, and Smoke that seem to work OK with sticky notifications (at least the one that my AppleScript code generated).

If you are using one of those three styles that do not support stickies, try one of the others. If this is the problem and you want to keep the does-not-work-with-sticky style for other notifications, you could configure one of the works-with-sticky styles just for SuperDuper! via the per-application settings.

Well, wouldn't you know it - I had selected Bezel. I'll give one of the others a try. Thanks for assisting me with this. I'll let you know if it works tomorrrow.

I chose Brushed yesterday and it works! Thanks.