error2 No such file or directory

[artdog]

I havea sparse system image of my Tiger install created with Super Duper 2.5 which I am trying to use to restore my system.

I have booted from the Tiger install disc, erased the drive and mounted the image. The restore runs for awhile but about halfway through I get an error message "error 2 No such file or directory".

Does anyone know what could be causing this? I did a restore from this image once with no problem but I have since updated it with smart back up.

[dnanian]

Did you try checking the "erase" button in the restore tab?

[artdog]

Yes I did try that. What happens is either the source, the destination or both volumes unmount and I get the error message "lost connection to helper tool"

No idea why that is happening but turning on that option gets me nowhere.

[dnanian]

That's different information, artdog. If volumes are unmounting like that, it sounds like you're having a hardware problems. What brought you to the point of needing to restore?

[artdog]

Not really different information, I just followed your instructions. I did restore before without using the erase function and had no problem. The only thing I know to be different is that I ran a smart update since that restore.

My reasons for restoring have nothing to do with a hardware problem. I updated to a newer version of the rails server I am using for work and found that there are bugs in that version I cannot work with. The set up time for re-installing the whole developent environment package is quite long so I wanted to just do a restore to avoid that. I was also hoping to configure future development workstations using the back up image as well.

It is turning out to be a less than reliable method it seems. I need a system I can count on.

[dnanian]

The unmounting volumes, though, indicate a hardware problem, as I said... and the error is coming from Disk Utility, which isn't something we wrote, and might have a bug in it.

If you have another Mac, I'd suggest restoring the (mounted) image with Smart Update, using the Mac, rather than Disk Utility. We have far better diagnostics than Disk Utility does, and you're far more likely to get a reasonable error message if there's a hardware (or other) problem going on here.

As far as "less than reliable" goes: we're all at the mercy of the OS, the hardware, your disk surface, etc. There are always things that can go wrong... with anything. That's why we provide support.

[artdog]

I'm not sure what you mean by restoring from another mac. I will have to read the manual about that. I would really like to get an image of our standard dev environment working so that I can just do a restore from it on any new macs we buy.

We are looking to hire about 10 people in the next 3 months.

[dnanian]

Here's what I'm suggesting:

- Get a Mac that's running OK (that isn't the one you want to restore to)
- Install SuperDuper! on it
- Attach the backup drive to that Mac and open the image
- Start up the Mac you want to restore, holding down the "T" key. This will put it in "FireWire Target Disk Mode", then connect it to the Mac

Now you have both the image and the "restore target" Mac attached.

- Start SD!, select the source image VOLUME (not the file, the open volume) in the first pop-up, the destination Mac in the 2nd, and "Backup - all files" for the script
- Start the copy