Definitely not a partition issue, no.

Mount the image and point to the volume, rather than the image file. Does *that* work?

Sorry, not sure what you mean. Do you mean in SD to select "disk image" as the destination, and then, in the Save pop up select the ext drive name without opening it to see the sparse image files? THat can't be because save is greyed out and the save as field has that leftover "idisk backup" that is no longer used and I can't seem to remove. And if I open the ext drive that contains the sparse image files until I select one of them I still have that "idisk backup" in the save as field. So I decided to let it go to idisk backup instead of selecting one of the ones I already had. It just created a new idisk backup sparse image file on the external drive along with the daily, weekly and monthly ones.

I know it does work when I do this the way you mentioned in the earlier posts on this thread. I open my time capsule, then open the drive, then click on the greyed out sparse image file I want, select read/write "sparse image" and save. THis is how I created the sparse image files. IF I do it this way, I even have the name of the sparse image file I just updated still in the choices for destination on the copy page. ANd the "idisk backup" choice is gone. But something happens to it, maybe after I do other backups, always after rebooting, when I lose the other sparse image files and only have "idisk backup" as a choice for destination along with any directly connected external drives, my idisk name and disk image.

I've been trying different things. If I launch the backup from the scheduled copies page, as soon as the backup to my daily, weekly or monthly idisk sparse images are done the destination field in the copy page changes back to "idisk backup".

Right now it is working every time I manually run the scheduled pages COPY NOW. It still doesn't work after rebooting and I won't know if it works for the scheduled copies in the middle of the night until tomorrow.
Any other suggestions?

Are you saving the settings for the different images? I'm confused about the problem you're having, since you originally basically said it won't mount the Time Capsule, but now you're saying it's not even remembering the image.

Try saving the different image choices (grayed, I know) with File > Save, then load them with File > Load and see if that works.

So I tried saving the SuperDuper! copy/to dialog which I saved as idisk "daily backup run" in Saved Settings. Now when I restart SuperDuper it opens that dialog but after rebooting it still doesn't work.

I wonder if this is the problem.
SuperDuper is no longer opening at Login and now when it opens I am getting a message box :
"THere was a problem connecting to the server "cindy's Time Capsule".
The share does not exist on the server. Please check the share name, and then try again. OK"

Could this be the problem? I used to get this all the time but haven't gotten it today until after rebooting and restarting. I thought it had something to do with my Time Machine backup which works fine.

Well, is that the name of the share? It must have been at some point...

THat is the name of the time capsule which appears in my
Finder under SHARED. THere is also another item called cindys-time-cap which comes and goes. Clicking on it gets "Connection Failed". I have wondered about this but didn't know who or what to ask about it.

I don't know what that might be, Cindy. Certainly, if you tell SuperDuper! to not remember drives (preferences) it won't prompt for that at startup.

You don't get that when loading settings, right?

You are correct. If you change the preference to not remember the drives it does not give me the error msg. BUt that doesn't solve my problem since the backup either from the scheduled copies dialog or loaded onto the SUperDuper! dialog still gets the "failed to mount idisk monthly backup" and doesn't work.

I will have to research this on apple's support site with the time capsule experts. I don't have any problem accessing any of my other external drives. I even now have my imac and air using another external drive connected to the TC for time machine so my MBP can have the whole TC 1TB for itself. I don't really care about the idisk backups anymore. I was just using them as a test to find the problem because they are so small and are finished backing up in 1 minutes or less. This mbp SD backup is the important backup and that can take an hour so it is hard to test that one.

It occurred to me that since I can get often this to work if I just do my Finder trick and open that external drive to show the sparse image files before I run SD, that maybe I could use a copy script or something to access the files at the start of the scheduled backup. I have 0 experience with scripts but would this work? THat is what I unsuccessfully tried to do with automater.

Try pointing to the *mounted* (open) volume instead, rather to the image file.

It might be because it is late and I am tired, but I don't know what you mean.

I don't know if this is what you meant, but I tried just opening cindy's Time Capsule which shows all the attached ext drives but not opening the actual drive to show the image files and that made no difference. WHen I did open the ext drive to show the sparse images it did work. I do notice that the cindys-time-cap is not there either time so maybe this doesn't matter.

I also just ran SD on my mbp for the full SD backup and it failed the first time until I did my Finder trick and showed the sparse image files.

No. What I mean is that, in Finder, double-click the image so it opens. That will show a volume (the 'virtual disk' from the image) in Finder (and in SuperDuper). Select that as the destination for the backup rather than the image file.

getting closer
 

Opened sparse image and saw destination under devices. SD does work and after daily backup, monthly and weekly work too.


THe strange thing is if I do what I used to do to make it work, just accessing sparse image in Finder without opening it, idisk daily now got quick failure, just a wink and it is over without the countdown or any message but with the log shown below. BUt then the monthly and weekly backups worked fine while daily continued to just blink and fail. THat is a new wrinkle but it doesn't happen when I open the sparse image so it might not matter to me, but I thought you should know about it.


Hopefully the destination will stay open in the Finder devices list and if I remember to do this whenever I reboot it will work overnight. I'll let you know.

It should automatically mount. You should set the "after copy" action to "eject".

I thought it worked for at least 1 day but I rebooted the imac and now it doesn't work. Same error messages. I thought that the eject option selected would stay with the scheduled copy but it doesn't. when I open ON SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION I see "do nothing". I have the same problem with the mbp which goes to work with me so when I return it has lost the "volume (the 'virtual disk' from the image) in Finder" and I have to go back and open the sparse image to access it again.
ANy other suggestions?