How long for cloning?

[BorisMD]

Sorry if this seems like a recurrent of crazy question, but I just replaced the hard drive on my PowerBook, and on the advice of MacWorld, decided to try SuperDuper for my cloning.

My old HDD had about 25 GB of data on it. I have enclosed it in a housing, attached it to the PB, via Firewire, and booted from the external drive.

The superduper program has now been running for over 22 hours, and it is only about half way through the cloning process. Is this normal?

Thanks,

Boris

[dnanian]

That's definitely not normal, Boris. Is the drive still blinking? If you look at the log (Cmd-l), are there any errors being written? Do you have AntiVirus installed?

[BorisMD]

Hi Dave,

No anti-virus up and running. At one time, I had the one you got free with dot mac, but I don't use it.

Command L gave me two logs, one for the console, which says I partitioned ok, then a bunch of timeout logs for isync, etc. Oh, yeah, it also shows SD going up.

The log for SuperDuper shows SD doing it's thing, then a bunch of entries like this:

ignoring /private/var/tmp/*****

with number/letter combinations in place of the *'s.

Should I stop and try to restart? Or try something else.

Also, I did a command i on the new internal HD, and it shows about 15 gb already used up, so I think the thing is working , just really slow.

As for the blinking light, it really doesn't blink much, I can feel the HD spinning, and the head makes an almost clock like ticking. If I try to access another program, it then does a more "normal" noise for a while. But using any program from the ext firewire HD is really slow.

Hope that helps.

Boris

[dnanian]

Something really sounds wrong with the hardware, Boris. It's hard to say what, but this just isn't even remotely normal...

I'd stop it, then try booting in Safe Mode (hold down shift, and keep it down, during power on & boot up). Then, give it another shot.

If that doesn't help, I'd try erasing and zeroing the destination drive's data and free space. Maybe it's having a lot of retries?

[BorisMD]

One of the reasons I replaced the HD is that I was worried something might be going wrong with my HD. It was making the more loud noise to access data. I thought it was either full, so it was skipping around more, or maybe something was physically wrong.

It is now about 3/4 of the way done, so maybe I'll just let it complete it's task.

I'll report back.

Boris

[dnanian]

OK, sounds reasonable... best of luck!

[BorisMD]

So how do I know if there are a lot of retries?

Boris

[dnanian]

I'm not sure you'll be able to tell, but if you open Console and look at the system log, it might be interesting to see if it's printing out a lot of errors or something.

[BorisMD]

Thanks.

Here's my plan:

I'm going to let the current clone finish. Then test the new internal HD.

If that works fine, I'll try to do some diagnostics on the old internal. I'm not quite sure what to use, I was thinking the techtools CD that came with AppleCare.

If the old internal doesn't work properly, I think I just spent $60 on a housing for a drive that doesn't work. Then I won't be able to use it for a back up external. I may have to look for another 2.5" to place in the housing for a back up.

After this is all finished, I'll have to upgrade and pay you for your software. As the other reviewers of your software have mentioned, your speedy replies are a stand out in the field of tech support.

Boris

[dnanian]

It might be that the new internal is misconfigured with the wrong jumpers, Boris (most modern Macs use "Cable select"). It's really hard to know, long distance, why things are so incredibly, unusually slow.

In any case, thanks for the nice comment about the support!

[BorisMD]

Hmmm...

I am at work, and don't have my PB with me here (it's at home still plugging away). I don't know about the cabling, except that when I ran a disk utility on the internal, it shows up normally in disk utility.

I _think_ I put it all together properly.

I hope the back up is done when I get home...48 hours later.

Boris

[dnanian]

I hope so too!

[BorisMD]

49 hours later, here's the error messages:

|09:35:08 PM|Info| WARNING: Caught I/O exception(16): Resource busy
|09:35:08 PM|Info| WARNING: Source: /.hotfiles.btree, lstat(): 0
|09:35:08 PM|Info| WARNING: Target: /Volumes/Powerbook HD/.hotfiles.btree, lstat(): 0
|09:35:08 PM|Info| Logging attributes for item: /.hotfiles.btree of type: 8
|09:35:08 PM|Info| Error copying /.hotfiles.btree to /Volumes/Powerbook HD/.hotfiles.btree of type 8
|09:35:08 PM|Error| SVUclone: Error: Couldn't create
|09:35:08 PM|Error| : Result too large
|09:35:08 PM|Error| SVUclone: Error copying /.hotfiles.btree to /Volumes/Powerbook HD/.hotfiles.btree of type 8
|09:35:08 PM|Error| : Result too large


I'm going to try and reboot from the new clone.

B

[dnanian]

OK -- that's a different problem (and certainly wouldn't cause this slowness). You might not boot, but it's easy to fix; search for "hotfiles.btree" on the forums and you'll find a post from me with a script that will let you ignore this file.

Make sure to Smart Update after, so you don't re-copy everything you've already copied.

[BorisMD]

Hey Dave,

I ended up just doing an archive and install of Tiger, ran the SW updatesm, and now all is well with the new internal HD. All my files, photos, music transferred.

I think the external drive is shot. I can't even get it to show up in disk utilities. I think I'll get a new HD for the external case, and then do the smart back ups. Of course I'll have to actually buy your software to do that.

Thanks again,

Boris