Superduper freezes

[rabs]

Hi

I am testing out the free trial of Superduper and having a problem. I am trying to make a clone of my Macbook (running 10.4.8) onto a Formac Firewire drive (part of a partioned drive - all Mac OSX Extended (journaled)) but the 3 or 4 times I have tried it just freezes after about 280,000 of the 520,000 files that need to scanned...any ideas why it would do this? I am interested in purchasing the product as it seems so simple to use yet I am confused with this problem. Thanks in advance for helping a 'free trial' customer!!

[dnanian]

It's quite possibly copying a large file. Have you tried leaving it alone to see if it finishes?

[rabs]

wow...thanks for the extra quick response! Left it over night yesterday but no joy. I am retrying as we speak and it has been stuck on the same evaluted amount for quite a while...I will keep you posted! Thanks

[dnanian]

Drop me a note for support and I'll give you a command you can run to see what's being copied.

[rabs]

Dave,

It was froze for about 35 minutes and now I have just had a kernal panic....had to shutdown computer. Upon restart got the question mark in a folder. I then tried to restore from the apple discs but there appears to be no HD in the Macbook....arrgghhh!!! Has my HD died?? Any suggstions...help! Thanks

[dnanian]

It certainly sounds like your internal disk died, yes. It doesn't show any disk inside your Mac?

[rabs]

Nope, tried the restore/disk utility form disc but there in no HD visible ...looks like a new HD, annoying thing is, is that I still didn't manage to do a clone!! Thanks for your help even though I was just a free trialer.

[dnanian]

Before you give up, I'd power everything off and take the battery out. Wait a little while, power back up, reset your pram and boot from the CD...

[rabs]

Dave,

I had to purchase a new today. I luckily did manage to do a clone of my system about 3 days ago onto a seperate hard drive. I have installed my new HD and booted from the clone. I then copied my clone to my new internal HD using superduper (presume this was right), in hope that my new internal HD would then be bootable...but no joy - when I try to start the computer without the external drive attached I just get the grey screen with the apple and 'moving circle' icon...but just doesn't start. Please help....thanks

[dnanian]

OK. Please clean install Leopard (I assume) to the internal drive. When it prompts you to "copy from another Mac", point it at the backup drive. That should bring in your apps and data.

[rabs]

I am currently trying to copy the clone to the internal via disk utility / restore as I read that this works too....would that be ok?...I didn't do a clean install of tiger... Oh and on Tiger 10.4.8. Thanks so much for your time!

[dnanian]

I don't think that'll help if the drive wouldn't boot, actually.

[rabs]

Dave,

I managed to get the internal drive bootable via disc utility/restore and everything seems to be ok. I do now have 3 strange files on my HD now (at root level) - etc, tmp and var - all with a littlearrow at the bottom left of them. Is this something I can delete or move somewhere away into a folder? I tried to put them all into one folder just to clean it up but was asked for my password...just don't want to make my system unstable or cause another problem. Upon your answer I will then try and do a clone backup again. Thanks

[dnanian]

No, you must not modify those folders in any way.