SD! Failures

[dnanian]

Hard restarts aren't good, Nick - you're clearly experiencing some hardware issues here. But you can use Finder's "Go To Folder" command to open

/Volumes

You can delete the folder you'll find with the name of the backup drive there, then restart your Mac.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Hard restarts aren't good, Nick - you're clearly experiencing some hardware issues here. But you can use Finder's "Go To Folder" command to open

/Volumes

You can delete the folder you'll find with the name of the backup drive there, then restart your Mac.

Nick's HD Clone 1 (looks like an alias) or Nick's HD Clone (which looks more like an actual folder)?

[dnanian]

Folder only. Don't delete any aliases.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Folder only. Don't delete any aliases.

Interesting: I disconnected the drive, and only the "Nick's HD Clone" folder showed up—the alias wasn't there. So, apparently that folder was a "ghost" (for want of a better word) that remained, and which caused the "confusion."

I deleted it, reconnected the drive, and ran SD! again. Although SD! once again got hung up at approximately that same point in the backup process, after an extremely long "stall," it continued on to successfully complete the backup.

[dnanian]

It was likely copying a large file at that point, Nick.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

It was likely copying a large file at that point, Nick.

SD! ran for an hour and 45 minutes...much longer than usual (it usually takes only about 30 minutes to run). Nothing much had changed on my machine since the previous backup, so I can't imagine what it could've been.

The only regularly changing files I have (which just happen to be the largest ones on my machine) are two Entourage database files, which grow only incrementally over time—they're currently about 5 GB each and haven't been changing much.

[dnanian]

If they change at all, they're copied in full. And if Entourage is running while you're backing up, they could end up filling the backup drive then shrinking on a recopy.

Quit Entourage -- and any programs that might have large, active data files -- before backing up.