Backing Up XServe - Missing Files

[Joe_B]

I am trying to backup the data on our Xserve to a WeibeTech Traydock drive. I scheduled SD to run last night and when I came in this morning the info was not updated, although the backup did run. I then ran SD again. It seemed like things were copying etc. but when I opened up the WeibeTech drive, it still had the old files on it.

I just did a search and the files were found on the WeibeTech. When I clicked on the drive the folder that I searched for showed up. But other "New" folders were still missing. Each time I searched for a folder it then appeared.

Does this seem normal? How do I get each File/Folder to show up?

SuperDuper Set up is:
Copy XserveData to WeibeTech
using Backup - all files
Copy different files from Xserve to WeibeTech

Thanks for your help, Joe

[dnanian]

This is, quite simply, due to bugs in Finder. If you relaunch the Finder (Control-Option-Click on its Dock icon, then choose "Relaunch"), the files will show up.

[Joe_B]

Dave,
before I do this I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. Control-Option Click the "Finder" icon in the Dock. Then click relaunch. Will this interupt the server in any way? Shut it down or restart it? I'm not much of a techy so I really don't want to screw anything up. Also is this something I'll have to do each day to verify the backup and is Shirt-Pocket or Apple working on fixing this bug?

Thanks, Joe

[dnanian]

Joe --

That's all you have to do. It won't interrupt the server, which need not be restarted.

This is something that Apple's been improving over time, but while it's managed to get better in Tiger it's still not 100%. There's nothing that Shirt Pocket can do, unfortunately... we'll just have to wait for Apple to fix it.

Regardless of Finder's "view" of the files, though, we have updated them on the destination.

[Joe_B]

Dave,
thanks for all your help so far. While I have your attention, I have one more question. We are doing a rotating backup each night. We have two identical drives that we swap out. While one drive is being backed up the other is off site. I have named each drive exactly the same but I don't think SD likes that? Should the drives be named the same or should I name them differently?

Thanks, Joe

[dnanian]

SuperDuper! doesn't care, actually -- but it won't treat them the same. We actually look at a lower-level "name", the "UUID", which uniquely identifies the drive.

[Joe_B]

So that sort of answers my question. When I set up a schedule I will have to set up one for each drive. I thought I could just set up one schedule to run every night but if I have a different drive mounted SD will only recognize the drive I used to set up the original schedule. Is that correct?

Joe

[dnanian]

That's right, you'll want to set up two schedules, one for each drive, every other night (or whatever schedule you want). Naming the drives uniquely will help you tell them apart.

[Joe_B]

Dave,
Thanks for all your help!

[dnanian]

Happy to be here, Joe.

[DaleMeyn]

Dave, what does UUID stand for, and how do I find what it is for any particular disk or volume? I always wondered why my iMac (and SD!) didn't care if I named two volumes the same. But I do. For example, you tell us that if we're going to boot from the backup volume, rename it the same as the source volume (Macintosh HD, for example). That kind of spooked me, I thought the iMac would get confused as I was.

[dnanian]

It means "Universal Unique IDentifier", and is a rather long number, generated automatically, that's associated with the volume. You can see them in Disk Utility...

[DaleMeyn]

Thanks for the info. Dale Meyn.

[Bo Winding]

Do diskimages have a similar or the same kind of "Universal Unique IDentifier"?

[dnanian]

They do, Bo, but if you're using the "Disk Image..." selection in the destination pop-up, we're looking at the file name, not the UUID.