Month: November 2007

SuperDuper! update

Posted on by david

Dave Nanian from Shirt Pocket Software blogs about the trials and tribulations of getting SuperDuper! updated for Leopard. The post includes some interesting details, for instance: The funky new directory hard links that Time Machine uses are available to other applications (I did not know that!)

  1. I’m glad they are taking this much care to get SD! right.
  2. I’m glad I don’t have anything that relies on the OS X internals to that degree.

Time Machine and a new motherboard

Posted on by david

It looks like its backup week here at rebelog headquarters…

Apparently TimeMachine uses the MAC (MAC as in “Media Access Control” not Mac as in “Macintosh”) address of your ethernet port to identify its backups. If you change your motherboard (like I just did with my MBP) then your MAC address changes and Time Machine will no longer associate your backup with your machine (because as far as TM is concerned it’s a new machine).

You can browse the backup, but if you wish to continue backing up, TM will tell you it cannot find the volume. Opening the TM preferences and pointing at the backup drive will fix that, but TM will create a new backup set from scratch.

Annoying.

Mea Culpa… again.

Posted on by david

I’ve been using Super Duper! for, like, ever (and therein lies the root of my problem.)

I’ve been using SD! to backup my laptop to an external LaCie drive every night. I’ve been doing this since said laptop was an Aluminum G4. I’ve been doing this since the default partition scheme was “Apple Partition Map”. I’ve been doing this since before I got my MacBook Pro…

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I took my MBP in for repair yesterday (finally got fed up with the thermal shutdown problem it’s always had). No problem I thought – the warm and fuzzy feeling that having a recent SD! backup gives you in full effect. I’ll just boot the new Mac Mini (Core 2 Duo) I bought for the living room off my backup and keep working until the MBP is back.

Uh, no.

Of course the Mac Mini wouldn’t boot from the backup drive (remember that old partition scheme?) OK, time to clone it to another drive… 3 hrs later and 96% of the way through the clone the destination drive dies. OK, try again, different drive, 2 1/2 hours later, the clone is complete (Yay!) but the clone is un-bootable (Boo!).

So, I re-installed Leopard on the destination drive and started to migrate from the backup… Estimated time to completion? ~5 hrs (at which point I gave up).

In case your are keeping track, that equates to an entire day wasted.

2 hrs later while shopping at the mall (and just around the corner from the Apple Store) my cell phone rings. It’s the Apple Store technician, my MBP is ready (Hooray for Pro Care!)

Lesson learned? Always. Test. Your. Backups. Warm and fuzzy feelings don’t actually mean your are safe. Trust, but verify.