Error making HD copy
 

I'm preparing to upgrade from 10.2.8 to 10.5.6 on my Powerbook G4. I don't do much of this type of thing so I'm very nervous about the whole process.

The first thing I needed to do was make a bootable back up, so I picked up a Firewire external HD, partitioned it, downloaded SuperDuper and figured this first step should be a piece of cake.

The copying barely gets going and I get and error and can't go any farther. I tried a few times and I get one of these two errors:

...Desktop/SuperDuper!.app/Contents/MacOS/SVUclone: Malformed Mach-o file

or:

****FAILED****: result=32256 errno=0 (Undefined error: 0)

This has already become a headache and I haven't even start the upgrade yet.

Can anybody give me some advice on these errors and on how I can get a simple bootable back up completed?

To run SD! on 10.2.8 you'll need an older version; a download link is under System Requirements in the right column of the SuperDuper! page. That's probably the easiest/safest way to create a bootable backup of the internal 10.2.8 volume on an external volume, especially while this type of thing is still unfamiliar to you. Otherwise you'll need to boot from a 10.4 (or newer) volume to run the current version.

Thanks, sjk for the quick reply.

I did download the earlier version 1.5.5 (v74) for my older OS.

Until I get the upgrade completed, I'm not looking at setting up anything fancy. I just need a simple bootable copy if something goes wrong in the upgrade or some apps don't run.

If you're getting errors with 1.5.5 then I think Dave might have to help you figure out what's wrong.

If practical, you might want to do a clean install of Leopard instead of attempting an upgrade from Jaguar (if that's even supported -- I dunno) after you've got a backup. Not sure if Migration Assistant from 10.2 to 10.5 will work, or how well.

Years ago I first installed a major OS X update on an external drive volume, booted/configured/ran that for awhile, and when satisfied it worked cloned it (with SD!) to the internal drive volume. I never rebooted the older OS as needed, just copied over files to the new OS as needed until leaving the rest behind when overwriting the internal volume (which I also kept a sparse image backup of for awhile but never needed anything from it).

So, something similar would be another option for you though obviously more complicated.

Unless your download is somehow damaged, you're not really running 1.5.5, or your OS install is damaged, I don't know why this would happen. I have quite a few people running v1.5.5 on 10.2.8 -- it does work (and is the same distribution of SD! that was originally used for 10.2.8 support way-back-when).

What you might want to try is installing a basic setup of OSX on a separate partition of the FW drive, run from that and use SD! there to copy your 10.2.8 setup...

Good morning Dave and skj. My frustration has calmed after a good nights sleep. Thanks for your replies.

So Dave, are you kind of on the same page as skj in that I might try installing my new 10.5.6 on the FW drive, boot and run off of that? If that would work, everything would be safe and intact on my internal while working everything out on the FW.

Well, if you still have the discs, I'd actually do this temporary installation with 10.2.x (then upgrade to 10.2.8). That way, the differences in 10.5 -- and it does have a modified file system -- won't affect the 10.2.8 copy.

I'll give that a try.

Thank you.

So, are you're saying a backup of the 10.2.8 filesystem volume using SD! on 10.5.x might have problems?

Not as far as 10.5 is concerned, but as far as 10.2.8 is concerned, yes - quite possible. I'd strongly advise against it.

I'm struggling to understand the purpose of a temporary Jaguar installation you suggested. Seems redundantly unnecessary for making a backup of the internal 10.2.8 volume and doesn't provide a bootable Leopard migration environment like I'd mentioned.

It's to provide a clean environment in which to run SD so he can copy the 10.2.8 drive to another drive without doing it from Leopard (which could cause the content to not work properly with 10.2.8).

I was thinking that would only be an option if SD! 1.5.5 couldn't be run under the current 10.2.8 system, and not that SD! would be run from a Leopard volume to create the 10.2.8 backup.

Anyway, I don't want to make this more confusing for eph3o so that's enough about that. :)

But that's where he started, Scott: 1.5.5 won't run for him under 10.2.8 for some reason... so I'm trying to create a clean 10.2.8 environment for him so he can get his copy done.

Oh, I still wasn't sure eph3o had been running 1.5.5 or mistakenly a newer, Jaguar-incompatible version.

Well... he claimed he was sure, so I was moving on. :)

Thanks, guys, for the suggestions and the discussion. After my last reply, I was going to give Dave's suggestions a try, but I got pulled away and haven't been able to get back to it.

I do have the 1.5.5 SD version downloaded. I'll come back and let you know if it works as soon as I get a chance.