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jefferyn 05-21-2021 01:42 PM

restoring from sparsebundle to APFS
 
Greetings,

i've run into an error message in trying to restore my OS from my SuperDuper backups that i could use some advice on. i make all my backups with superduper.

when attempting to use disk utility to restore from a sparsebundle backup of my boot partition, i saw an error message. i didn't get a screenshot, but the error said something to the effect that it can't restore from an HFS+ disk image to an APFS volume. i contacted apple support, but they won't help since my mac is passed the apple care date...

i read the post on the forum "restoring to new APFS from HFS+ sparsebundl". but i didn't see something that would help me there. i didn't see anything else searching the forum that seemed relevant when searching for APFS...

i'd made the sparsebundle backup onto one of my external drives a week ago before having my internal drive swapped out for a new SSD. the original partition that i backed up was on 10.14.6 and the drive was formatted as APFS. the new SSD is also on 10.14.6 and is formatted as APFS. so the original and the new drives had the same format and same OSes.

my question is how to backup and restore with APFS and sparsebundles made with superduper.
do i need to change something in SD when backing up so i can restore to APFS?
do i need to do something different to restore from a sparsebundle to an APFS formatted drive?

i am trying to figure out both my long term approaches and what i need to do to get things working in this instance. in the current instance, i have more options to explore since i moved drives around and still have access to the original drive... but my question here is more about the backup/recovery capabilities if i only have the sparse bundle from superduper.

if there was something about this in the forum before, i didn't find it while searching.

thank you for any suggestions.
jeffery

PS. running superduper 3.3.1 v121
MBPro mid 2012, 2.7GHz Core i7,
new samsung 860 EVO SSD

dnanian 05-21-2021 01:59 PM

In general, you shouldn't copy to bundles, you should copy directly to bootable drives.

I would suggest using SuperDuper! to copy from the (opened) bundle to an APFS formatted destination. You can then use that as the source for a migration, or you can start up from it and restore.

jefferyn 05-21-2021 03:57 PM

Hi Dave,

thank you for your reply!
i was going to post another thread about the current situation, e.g. the short term solution...

i don't completely understand the step of transferring the OS installation from the hard drive on one computer to the hard drive on another computer. i started there before but, superduper has notes about copying only recommended data and not all the "system specific" files, so tired the disk utility and the route of the sparsebundle backups.

apologies in advance. there is a lot of information because i have multiple computers and external drives and partitions.

i am playing musical chairs with the drives and data. i've moved drives around. installed a new 2TB SSD in one of my computers. moved the old hard drive (HFS+) into an external enclosure. one computer has a 1TB SSD, the other computer has the new 2TB SSD, both APFS.
i am trying to transfer the contents of the 1TB computer to the 2TB computer.
then, i will transfer the contents of the now external hard drive to the 1TB computer.
the computers have different data and are used for different things. so it is just a mater of migrating data around. my user data is on a separate partition and i'm only dealing with the OS partition on each computer.

in addition to these drives above, i have everything backed up on the 2 external drives. my external drives have a bootable partition and data is backed up to other partitions with mostly sparsebundles. so LOTs of copies. everything boots.
also, i feel like i need to see that these backups work, or i'm wasting my time with these backups...

in the computer with the new SSD, i already used SD to mirror the user partitions between the 2 computers. so my user data is transferred. i'm only working on the root partitions.
initially, i was trying to copy the root partition from the computer with the older drive to the computer with the newer drive. superduper has notes about copying only recommended data and not all the "system specific" files, so tired the disk utility.
and i eventually went the route of the sparsebundle backups.

if superduper doesn't actually transfer all the files, e.g. omits "system specific files", i'm not sure how to mirror my system.
sorry i've i'm being dumb about this. i think there are a lot of options with so many copies of data.
what do you suggest?

any suggests appreciated.
jeffery

-- if needed, my partition/backup approach

i have multiple copies of my data.
i am working with 2 MBPros of the same model and same OSes for the moment. i use the 2 computers for different things and they have entirely different data. one computer is my working computer, the other is my media server, music, audio books, sinks to my iPod, etc.
I also have 2 external hard drives with multiple partitions. I partition my internal drives as "root" and "user". i follow this practice because i learned to do this as a unix sysadmin in the late 80s and early 90s. it greatly simplifies OS gymnastics and user data backups and restores. also very significant, if the user partition fills up, it doesn't kill the computer, i can log into a separate admin account with it's home directory on the root partition and deal with the full user partition. ipod/iphone backups have unexpected consumed the 10's of GB unexpectedly and cause problems. etc. the home directories are on the "user" partition. the OS is on the root partition.
in my external drives, i have a boot partition (root), a partition which i mirror the user partition of my working computer, and a partition for sparcebundles and archives. i backup the internal root partition to a sparse bundle on the partition for images an archives. i also use this to keep archives in sparsebundles when migrating from one os to the next so i can roll back if needed. so i have a number of sparse images there, some only user data and some with snapshots of OSes. because i keep a snapshot of they user partition, it is not tied to or dependent upon OS releases. and i have rolled back OS sometimes and don't have any issues with user files. i have the scheme replicated on both external drives.

dnanian 05-21-2021 04:20 PM

I think you rather misinterpreted what we were saying. We said that we don't copy certain files (caches and the like). You don't want to "mirror" those things. They're specific to the system, or have no meaning across a restart...and I don't understand what any of that has to do with bundles or images.

There's so much info here, Jeffery, and kind of scattershot, that I honestly don't quite know what to suggest beyond what I already suggested...?

jefferyn 05-23-2021 03:06 PM

Hi Dave,

sorry, i know i included a lot of info. let me try to ask the question again the simplest way i can think of.
my question from your earlier post was the following:

how do you advise using SD to transfer contents from 1 drive to another, when attempting to restore (instead of the backup process)?

--
what i've done since friday...
after my last post, i booted the computer with the new SSD into target disk mode and connected to my older computer (with the data/OS i wanted to transfer) via firewire cable. both MBPros on MacOS 10.14.6, APFS SSDs. i used SD "restore - all files" from the older computer to the mounted SSD. SD process seemed to run ok, but it finished with an error. i read the SD error log and sent it to ShirtPocket via the button in the error log friday afternoon.

so i guess my approach to transfer the contents between the 2 SSDs was not the right way to do it...

saturday, i tried booting the computer with the new SSD and it seemed to start ok. but i don't know what didn't finish right in the transfer. so i'm a bit nervous about using the computer with the new SSD until i know what i need to fix.

i figure it is probably simplest to finish the discussion about the specifics of the error via the email that has the error log specifics, instead of copying the error log into the forum...

thanks so much for your help!
jeffery

dnanian 05-23-2021 03:11 PM

That seems right, but I would need to examine the log, which as I indicated in your email to me, I did not receive.

If you could, please copy and paste the log into a reply to *that email* (DO NOT post it here) and I'll take a look.


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