Mixed firewire/network backups -- how?

[Ed Dennison]

I've got a powerbook on a home network that I'm trying to keep backed up. The strategy I'm using is to create a full disk backup to a disk image with a firewire drive connected to the powerbook. Then, I disconnect the FW drive and connect it to a file server. Then I can set the powerbook to automatically update the disk image file on a nightly basis.

But, SD will not let me select an existing disk image file on the file server as the target for an "Updated files only" copy. Is there some way to do this?

Thanks,
Ed

[dnanian]

Is the existing disk image a sparse image, Ed? If so, just use the "Disk Image..." selection in the destination pop-up, and choose the image. (It's grey in the lower list, but you can select it and it'll appear in the edit box.)

You can ignore the warning about overwrite: we'll update the image if it's already there.

[Ed Dennison]

Thanks. It is a r/w sparse image. The warning message was putting me off.

But the backup fails with this message in the log:

| 10:43:17 AM | Info | ...ACTION: Preparing disk
| 10:43:17 AM | Info | ......COMMAND => Enabling permissions on disk
| 10:43:17 AM | Info | Refreshing Disk Arbitration ...
| 10:43:17 AM | Error | vsdbutil: Couldn't get volume information for '/Volumes/disk 1': No such file or directory


Full disclosure: the file server is a Windows XP home box running MacDrive 6 and sharing the root of the firewire drive. When I open the server in the Finder, the .dmg file appears fine and I can open it and view it.

The diskimage file is in a folder on the firewire disk.

Thanks again!

Ed

[dnanian]

It sounds like it's reacting too slowly for the system to "see" the volume before we access it, when we refresh the list of drives. I'm not sure why this would be, but there's unfortunately no "fix" I can provide at present... if you restart the Mac, does the same thing happen?

[Ed Dennison]

I restarted the mac and now it's working fine. Thank you again for truly amazing technical support. Try to enjoy the beautiful weather we're having this afternoon!

Ed

[dnanian]

Glad that helped, Ed. Enjoy the weather!

[Ed Dennison]

Hey, since you're still there if I set up a scheduled back up and use the Energy Saver panel to tell the OS to wake up my mac 5 minutes before the backup, will it wake up a powerbook that's asleep with it's lid closed?

Ed

[dnanian]

Use one-minute-before, Ed... and I actually don't know. I believe it will, but you'll have to try it to find out!

[Ed Dennison]

I set my PB to wake up at 1:59 AM and the SD backup to run at 2:00 AM.

When I got up this morning, there was no indication that SD had run at all. The scheduled backups list still had my entry, but it had no "last run" time and the "next run" time was for tomorrow morning.

I assume that I didn't need to leave SD running for this to work.

I will try leaving the PB with it's lid up tonight.

Any other tips?

[dnanian]

Nope -- you just have to be logged in with the screen "unlocked", Ed.