Smart Update exceeds disc capacity?
 

I am on my third update of a cloned drive. This third time the back-up gave the error 'failed to copy files' because drive had exceeded capacity while using Smart Update? There is now only 58 MB left on the destination drive. I thought the drive was made to look like the source, erasing and updating. How did I fill up the destination if I have only used Super Duper on it (again, I erased drive, created clone, and have updated two times before this).

Internal Source Drive: ATA Drive 120 (111.8 GB)

This drive (system drive) has about 7 GB free

Destination Drive: Lacie Firewire 120 (111.8 GB)

Now only 58 MB free after failing to finish update (and I definitly saw the 'Smart Update' message before starting operation)

OSX 10.4.5 / Powerbook 17 HR 1.67 / 2 GB RAM

Thanks in advance.

Hmmm, after I posted, your forum provided me with 'Similar Threads' and I see this has come up before. So how do I handle this?

I basically just keep my system up to date and don't neccessarily have some changing folder that I can rename. I appreciate your explanations elsewhere but if you could perhaps expound a bit more, as it stands now the only way I would have to back-up is to erase my destination. I just bought new drives specically to make this 120 my back-up, is there any more you can suggest on how to use Smart Update with drives the same size, 'rules of thumb' maybe?

The problem is there's no general rule of thumb. But there are some relatively easy workarounds when you have trouble.

As I explain in the user's guide, this problem happens when we hit things to copy before we hit things to delete. Almost always, it's a problem with users who are dealing with large data sets in a single folder (movie projects, recordings, pictures) that they've renamed or moved, and we hit the "new folder(s)" before we get a chance to remove the "old folder(s)".

You can help SuperDuper! out by renaming or moving the same folder(s) on the destination -- or deleting something you've deleted.

Hope that helps.

Sorry, my bad...didn't check there for no good reason ;-(

Thanks for the reply, I will try your suggestion.

btw, I did find a large folder of files that on the source was 12 gb and the unfinished BU 20 gb...I take it that is what you are talking about. I deleted the destination version and then manually dragged the folder over to the destination. I will now try to to the back up again.

No problem at all, "LoopyC" -- just a gentle reminder that there's a lot of information to be found there! :)