Restore problem

[dazzer]

Greetings, new to the forum.

I've been using an unregistered SuperDuper to make bootable clones for backup, all fine up to now. I was thinking of stumping up the cash to register as Smart Backups seem a much better idea than spending 2 hours each time.

For the first time I needed to revert to a previous OS version after updating to 10.5.7 seemed to coincide with increased fan usage. I booted via Firewire from my external HD and as I couldn't actually find a "restore" option I'd been expecting to see, selected "Copy from Bootable Clone to Macintosh HD" in SD, kind of doing the reverse to what I normally do during backups.

First problem was that after 15 minutes of erasing Macintosh HD I got an error message saying "cannot erase disk". There was a button for getting a log report (or something similar) but it didn't actually work.

I cancelled everything and started again, despite warnings from SD. What choice did I have as SD had apparently already erased part of my internal HD? This time SD dealt with Macingtosh HD OK but then started hanging on the copying data part, 20 minutes of not actually doing anything. I had to cancel and start again. This time everything worked (incedentally, reverting back to 10.5.4 didn't solve the fan problem).

Needing to take three attempts to restore has got me worried. Can I safely buy SD, was this a one-time (user) error? Any tips?

Cheers

[dnanian]

I don't have much to go on here, so it's hard for me to suggest what might have caused your erase to fail. Certainly, the log button should have worked.

My guess is that the internal drive was 'busy' -- perhaps with Spotlight -- and thus we weren't able to erase it because the OS failed. Often, naming the backup the same as the source before you start up from it will help this kind of thing.

The "hanging on copying data part" could be large files being copied -- again, I don't know, but that seems possible.

Remember that a restore is just like a backup. If you're confident about the backups (and the backups seem to be working just fine), I think you can be equally confident in the restore. You're doing the same thing...

[dazzer]

Dave

Thanks very much for the quick reply, much appreciated. And yes, tricky for you to solve, at least it seems I did the correct procedure.

Are you suggesting I give my external HD the same name as my internal one? (I wasn't even sure that was possible, I'm guessing I'd be able to tell them apart within SD due to different icons?)

As a side note, if SD had been unable to completely erase my internal HD, would I have been able to stop, erase the HD from within Disk Utility and then try and restore again from SD?

Cheers again for your input.

[dnanian]

Yes, the same name as the internal one. It's definitely possible.

SD! actually uses Disk Utility to erase, so it's unlikely DU would have been able to erase if we couldn't do it. But you could start up from the OSX install DVD and erase, then use Smart Update (which won't explicitly erase), or use Smart Update (which would erase file-by-file as necessary).