How long for cloning?
 

Sorry if this seems like a recurrent of crazy question, but I just replaced the hard drive on my PowerBook, and on the advice of MacWorld, decided to try SuperDuper for my cloning.

My old HDD had about 25 GB of data on it. I have enclosed it in a housing, attached it to the PB, via Firewire, and booted from the external drive.

The superduper program has now been running for over 22 hours, and it is only about half way through the cloning process. Is this normal?

Thanks,

Boris

That's definitely not normal, Boris. Is the drive still blinking? If you look at the log (Cmd-l), are there any errors being written? Do you have AntiVirus installed?

Hi Dave,

No anti-virus up and running. At one time, I had the one you got free with dot mac, but I don't use it.

Command L gave me two logs, one for the console, which says I partitioned ok, then a bunch of timeout logs for isync, etc. Oh, yeah, it also shows SD going up.

The log for SuperDuper shows SD doing it's thing, then a bunch of entries like this:

ignoring /private/var/tmp/*****

with number/letter combinations in place of the *'s.

Should I stop and try to restart? Or try something else.

Also, I did a command i on the new internal HD, and it shows about 15 gb already used up, so I think the thing is working , just really slow.

As for the blinking light, it really doesn't blink much, I can feel the HD spinning, and the head makes an almost clock like ticking. If I try to access another program, it then does a more "normal" noise for a while. But using any program from the ext firewire HD is really slow.

Hope that helps.

Boris

Something really sounds wrong with the hardware, Boris. It's hard to say what, but this just isn't even remotely normal...

I'd stop it, then try booting in Safe Mode (hold down shift, and keep it down, during power on & boot up). Then, give it another shot.

If that doesn't help, I'd try erasing and zeroing the destination drive's data and free space. Maybe it's having a lot of retries?

One of the reasons I replaced the HD is that I was worried something might be going wrong with my HD. It was making the more loud noise to access data. I thought it was either full, so it was skipping around more, or maybe something was physically wrong.

It is now about 3/4 of the way done, so maybe I'll just let it complete it's task.

I'll report back.

Boris

OK, sounds reasonable... best of luck!

So how do I know if there are a lot of retries?

Boris

I'm not sure you'll be able to tell, but if you open Console and look at the system log, it might be interesting to see if it's printing out a lot of errors or something.

Thanks.

Here's my plan:

I'm going to let the current clone finish. Then test the new internal HD.

If that works fine, I'll try to do some diagnostics on the old internal. I'm not quite sure what to use, I was thinking the techtools CD that came with AppleCare.

If the old internal doesn't work properly, I think I just spent $60 on a housing for a drive that doesn't work. Then I won't be able to use it for a back up external. I may have to look for another 2.5" to place in the housing for a back up.

After this is all finished, I'll have to upgrade and pay you for your software. As the other reviewers of your software have mentioned, your speedy replies are a stand out in the field of tech support.

Boris

It might be that the new internal is misconfigured with the wrong jumpers, Boris (most modern Macs use "Cable select"). It's really hard to know, long distance, why things are so incredibly, unusually slow.

In any case, thanks for the nice comment about the support!

Hmmm...

I am at work, and don't have my PB with me here (it's at home still plugging away). I don't know about the cabling, except that when I ran a disk utility on the internal, it shows up normally in disk utility.

I _think_ I put it all together properly.

I hope the back up is done when I get home...48 hours later.

Boris

I hope so too!

49 hours later, here's the error messages:

|09:35:08 PM|Info| WARNING: Caught I/O exception(16): Resource busy
|09:35:08 PM|Info| WARNING: Source: /.hotfiles.btree, lstat(): 0
|09:35:08 PM|Info| WARNING: Target: /Volumes/Powerbook HD/.hotfiles.btree, lstat(): 0
|09:35:08 PM|Info| Logging attributes for item: /.hotfiles.btree of type: 8
|09:35:08 PM|Info| Error copying /.hotfiles.btree to /Volumes/Powerbook HD/.hotfiles.btree of type 8
|09:35:08 PM|Error| SVUclone: Error: Couldn't create
|09:35:08 PM|Error| : Result too large
|09:35:08 PM|Error| SVUclone: Error copying /.hotfiles.btree to /Volumes/Powerbook HD/.hotfiles.btree of type 8
|09:35:08 PM|Error| : Result too large


I'm going to try and reboot from the new clone.

B

OK -- that's a different problem (and certainly wouldn't cause this slowness). You might not boot, but it's easy to fix; search for "hotfiles.btree" on the forums and you'll find a post from me with a script that will let you ignore this file.

Make sure to Smart Update after, so you don't re-copy everything you've already copied.

Hey Dave,

I ended up just doing an archive and install of Tiger, ran the SW updatesm, and now all is well with the new internal HD. All my files, photos, music transferred.

I think the external drive is shot. I can't even get it to show up in disk utilities. I think I'll get a new HD for the external case, and then do the smart back ups. Of course I'll have to actually buy your software to do that.

Thanks again,

Boris

Bizarre, Boris -- it does sound like a weird problem. What kind of external case is that?

I got a case from Other World Computing (OWC). It comes with a circuit board upon which you mount your HD. The whole assembly then slides into a translucent enclosure and you're set. The circuit board has two FW ports, an AC adapter port, and a power switch (to set whether you want FW power or AC power).

It's really a nice enclosure. I hope that wasn't the culprit.

Boris

You're right, the OWC enclosures are very good. Sometimes, though, drives will suck more power than the bus is able to supply, and you do need to attach the AC adapter: was that attached during this process?

I was only powering via FW.

I have a quircky FW port--I have to either put the PowerBook to sleep or restart, with the device plugged in, for the device to be recognized by the FW port (it does supply power right away, just not device recognition). It's even this way with my iPod. I've just grown accustomed to this weird behavior.

Also, after the clone was complete, I did a disk utility on the drives, and the disk image "Macintosh HD", on the external, was grayed out. I think the drive is bad. The S.M.A.R.T. didn't read failure, but couldn't read.

Now, I can't even mount the external drive.

Boris

Well, SMART status isn't available on external drives anyway, so that's not a big surprise. But -- you didn't indicate you were backing up to an "image"... were you? Or were you writing directly to the drive?

No, directly to the drive. I was just checking the disk utility on the image.

Boris

Weird. I wish I had an idea for you. I'd definitely try connecting the AC adapter to the case next time you give this a shot.

Boris

As Dave suggested to you, try to beg, borrow or steal an AC adapter and try it out. I had exact same problem as you, as far as the SD errors I was receiving. Unlike you, my setup had worked perfectly with SD and my external OWC Firewire case...until I increased the drive size from 40g/4200 rpm to 60g/7200 rpm. After much work with Dave, super helpful as usual, we found the power (bus) too little to run the drive successfully. Actually, it would run, apparently normally, but couldn't handle copies of larger files, either under SD or in the Finder.

Was particularly hard to diagnose as at one end of my day, SD & this drive copied fine (I used AC power there, work.) At home, with only bus power, didn't work.

Also, don't give up on the drive. Mine also got so fouled up it would not show up in Finder, etc. I would try to reformat it somehow, Disk Utility being first option, then try cloning with AC power. --Ted--

Ted's being far too kind, Boris -- "we" didn't figure out the AC problem, Ted did! It wasn't something I had considered, and I'm trying to make up for that here. ;)

Thanks Ted and Dave,

I'll give it a try this weekend.

Boris

Well guys, you were correct. The AC power was an issue with drive performance.

I have erased my now external with disk utility, over-writing with all zeros, and no mechanical flaws were detected. It took about 15 minutes.

I then used my now purchased copy of SD to do a non-bootable clone, and that took 26 minutes. I can see all of the files on the external, but the access time is somewhat long. The drive will still occassionally lapse into this tic tic tic mode in between normal hard drive access noises.

I'm going to use this drive for a while, and if any issues come up, I'll replace it.

Thanks,

Boris

15 minutes? Hm -- that's kind of short if you wrote zeros to both the data and free space. I'd expect it to take far, far longer... and the fact that there are tick-tick-tick noises -- depending on exactly what those are -- indicates that there might still be problems on the drive...

In any case, glad that attaching AC helped!