Why is my backup smaller than the original HD?

[uelef]

I deleted all temporary and all swap files via Onyx - I also cleared log files and so on... The size of my Macintosh HD is still the same.

When I open the SystemProfiler of OS X it says that for both SATA drives I got in my G5 (a WesternDigital 200 GB with Mac OS X and a 160 GB Seagate disk with additional data) the SMART status is checked (in German it says "?berpr?ft"). So it should be normal...

Ulf
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[dnanian]

Well, Ulf, as I've said elsewhere, we've never seen a case where SuperDuper! didn't copy a file it was supposed to copy. So I don't think something "bad" happened here.

Rather, I'd guess that one of the files that's being deliberately ignored is quite large. Unusually so. I can't verify that from here, but you can check for yourself by examining the copy script you're using. Every file that's being treated specially is there, and you can see if any are large on your machine.

One distinct possibility: a folder in /Volumes that has data in it, even when no drive is attached...

[uelef]

I'll check your suggestions tomorrow - it's time to go to bed in Germany.

I also checked your idea regarding the slow startup time on my G5 and downloaded the iDefrag demo - but my G5 isn't that much fragmented. I got similar values on my PowerBook G4 (1,67 GHz) that starts up much faster - although it should not be as fast as my G5 dual 2.5 GHz. On both are quite the same applications - the G5 only got a lot more of data on its disks.

Thanks for suggestions, Ulf
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[dnanian]

Hm. Well, it's also possible that waiting for drives to spin up can make hitting the desktop slower. But that wouldn't explain slower boot.

This might just be "one of those things", Ulf. If stuff is working well, and you're not noticing slowness in general, I'd probably just live with the few extra seconds on boot...

[uelef]

Well, I guess I really have to live with that problem... Apps do not show any slowness. I work e.g. with Logic 7.1 that needs a lot of CPU power and everything is ok.

I'm asking myself if maybe my Western Digital Harddisk is not ok. The boot time problem exists since I installed Tiger - and this was the first time I used this disk as boot disk. On Panther I used the original Seagate drive that now is my second HD.
Problems with the Western Digital HD could also explain why the startup time from a firewire clone is faster. But how can I check my suggestion? Checking my disk with the Mac OS X Disk Utility (I don't know how it's named in English) I got no error - also when I use the Hardware Diagnosis CD that was delivered with my G5.

I'm a bit annoyed: I own one of the fastest G5 and spent a lot of money for it - and the startup time is much slower than on my PowerBook.

Ulf
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[dnanian]

I understand your frustration, but fortunately there's a lot more to your machine than just startup performance!

[uelef]

You're right, Dave. But now it's really time to go to bed. Thanks for your fast and many answers! I'll get some more testing regarding the HD size tomorrow.

Ulf
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[davecc]

uelef,

My experiences with the Western Digital HD are bad as it crashed on my brand new 1 month G5 2.7 hence the reason I got SuperDuper. I replaced it with two 300GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 7200RPM SATA II HD drives and have found a significant boost in boot times and general performances. My advice to you is to remove the WD HD as it has a hight failure rate on the G5 range.
David
Check this link:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...t5.8@.68aefb20

[dnanian]

Along these lines, I'd actually suggest the Max Line III, rather than the Diamond Max drives. They're rated to have a 24-hour duty cycle...

Many swear by the Seagate drives, too.

[uelef]

Good morning - here I am again...
The reason why I bought the Western Digital drive was that it was one of the fastest and one of the quietest. The internal Seagate drive that was delivered with G5 is much louder when it reads and writes data. I don't like noisy HDs.

I will make a little backup session today to see what's going on with the startup time. I will backup my Seagate drive data to an external FW drive then clone my Western Digital boot drive to the Seagate drive and have a look what happens to the startup time using another internal HD for booting Mac OS X.

Regarding the amount of data on my Macintosh HD and my FW clone: I found on my Macintosh HD on the hidden Volumes folder a folder called "LaCie Sicherung" (means "backup") with a Applications folder in it that has about 23 GB. I guess this folder is responsible for the difference of data on both drives. This folder maybe is the rest of a unfinished backup.

Ulf
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[dnanian]

Did you use Deja Vu at some point?

[uelef]

No, until now I did not know Deja Vu. But what I used was CarbonCopyCloner - but it did not work with 10.4 and 10.4.1 - now with 10.4.2 it works again. But cloning a drive with CCC takes a bit longer than with SuperDuper!

For what problem should Deja Vu maybe be responsible?

Ulf
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[dnanian]

Well: Deja Vu and CCC use psync to do scheduled backups. But, at least in the case of Deja Vu, certain versions of it did not check to see if the drive was mounted before actually starting the copy.

As such, they'd copy to the mount point, in /Volumes, and if the drive wasn't there, the contents of the backup would be copied into a folder rather than to the drive (since both basically look the same).

This can also happen when a drive fails -- drops off the bus -- during a backup operation. The OS might not indicate a problem has occurred quickly enough, and then the mount point which -- again -- looks like a folder, would get created like any other.

The end result is the same, regardless: your data ends up in a folder in /Volumes, rather than on the actual drive you thought it was being copied to.

I hope that helps to explain...