Clone Disaster

[iLLuMiNaTiCa]

Hi

I just cloned my macbook pro internal drive to a USB "2.5" 500GB partition as always,
This drive has 2 partitions, one is LEOPARD DVD install and the other is for cloning my internal drive.

When the clone was done, i got the complete successful green light from "SuperDuper" saying so., i then chose to restart from my "Leopard install DVD" partition of the same hard drive using the reference pain, which showed 3 options, Internal HD, DVD install of osx and my clone, so it was there clearly showing all 3 contained a system.

After restarting with the DVD clone partition, i erased my internal MBP drive to re install a fresh system, totally un aware that my CLONE partiition never atcually took place properly or got corrupted!

Here is all that it contains!
1- Applications folder, with only a utilities folder in it and 3 things.
2- BaseSystem.pkg.174pMDO8jm cintains BaseSystem.plan and a reciepts folder.
3-bin folder EMPTY,
4-Library, with a Application Support folder, audio folder, Documentation ƒ, Preferencesƒ and a Receipts ƒ.
5- privateƒ
6- sbinƒ 2 items
7-System ƒ with a library folder, with many empty folders.
8-usrƒ with several empty folders

454GB available still after 3 hours of waiting for a clone to be done,


Originally, the drive had iMovie, FCP, logic and pro tools sessions., well over 200 GB, ALL GONE now, as well as my calender, address book and browser book marks and prefs.

Any help appreciated

[dnanian]

I have absolutely no idea how that coul dhappen, iLLuMiNaTiCa: you didn't boot from the backup before you erased the original? Do you have the log from this failed run? This was a Leopard install? Why did you erase it at all?

[iLLuMiNaTiCa]

Originally Posted by dnanian

I have absolutely no idea how that coul dhappen, iLLuMiNaTiCa: you didn't boot from the backup before you erased the original? Do you have the log from this failed run? This was a Leopard install? Why did you erase it at all?

I did not boot from the back up,

After restarting with the DVD clone partition, i erased my internal MBP drive to re install a fresh system, totally un aware that my CLONE partiition never atcually took place properly or got corrupted!

my intention again was to erase the original and then restore only several files after having a fresh system.

And no log since it is all erased, no SuperDuper either, i do have other drives with files but they are older, i am about to FILE SALVAGE the drive to see what it can recover., i need to recover documents from programs that have files inside in order to re open them , would you happen to know a recover application that does that? like recovers the folder and structure rather then just a list of movies and renames then 001, 002 etc which is useless.

[dnanian]

I just don't have any information here to work with, unfortunately. I have no idea what might have happened - I'm not aware of any case where SuperDuper! would do something like this... if your salvage recovers the log, could you please send it to me?

What's especially weird is that 'random' stuff is present at random locations on the drive. We go through them one folder at a time. You wouldn't see this kind of thing if we had just randomly stopped: it really seems to me like the drive failed while we were copying (maybe) and the OS never told us that things had failed (remember we use the OS to actually copy the files)... but even then, it wouldn't have removed things, nor would it have copied only a few items.

I suppose the source drive's folder structure could have been damaged in a weird way, too, where the files weren't present in the folder list as we stepped through. But, why would it have taken hours and hours to copy? (That implies the above.)

---

This is a horrible thing to have happened, and -- really -- I have no idea how it occurred, or how it could have. But please, everyone, regardless of what solution you use to back up: test your backups. Nothing is perfect: neither SuperDuper!, nor drives, nor OSX, nor your own technique. Especially if you're going to 'voluntarily' erase your drive, check that things are OK first! It only takes a few minutes to do.

Also, remember that if your data is important to you, you should back it up to more than one location. If you back it up to only one place, and your drive fails after you've erased it, you've lost that data... so please, please (please) be careful!

[iLLuMiNaTiCa]

I am still salvaging the 500GB drive, had over 477GB of files on it.


Last week i replaced my 4x 750GB drives with 1TB drives, so i moved around allot of files, stock footage, scenes, photos and audio etc,


coincidentally during that process i put several things i fund scattered into my internal drive, and then cloned it with SD, last night i decided to clone due to issues arising from a plug in, Digidesign advised me to do so to remove some corrupted authorization etc., at the rarest time this happened, and i have to tell you, happened a few years back during a major back up like this too, i mean WOW, talk about luck here.


So i am only now hunting down specific files in my desktop folder which where supposed to be put away into correct folders on the new 1TB drives which all ready took a week to sort out.

I have to say Superduper has done nothing BUT saved me allot of time last week, i have a funny feeling this happened because i was in session while backing up.

As soon as i get the log i will upload it to you.

[dnanian]

Please do; thanks. I think we all feel for you...

[mkraft]

Originally Posted by dnanian

But please, everyone, regardless of what solution you use to back up: test your backups.

What's the best way to test a backup, or is that a built-in feature of SD (that can be done post-backing up)?

Thanks.

[dnanian]

Start up from it!