Local backup of iDisk (tip)

[Michael@wengam]

I just found I could make a scheduled back up of the contents of my iDisk onto a sparse disk image on my local hard drive, using SuperDuper.

That way, I could keep daily, weekly or monthly copies of the documents there, free from the danger that the remote copy gets deleted or otherwise inaccessible. Cool!

I have iDisk sync set to 'on', update automatically.

[Michael@wengam]

I'd like to do the same trick (make a local backup of an iDisk) with the source disk being *another* user's iDisk.

That is, I can mount another MobileMe member's iDisk using Finder-->Go-->iDisk-->Other User's iDisk...

Their disk appears in the Finder and works in many ways like my own iDisk, except there is no local copy for offline use and no file synchronization.

But, whereas my own iDisk appears in SuperDuper's pop-up list of source disks (with the same name as my MobileMe username), the other user's iDisk is not visible as a Source disk option.

Is that just the way things are, and I have to accept that? Or is there a workaround to do what I want to do?

[dnanian]

The local iDisk, when sync'ed, is a local volume. The other is a network volume, which we can't copy.

[Michael@wengam]

After happily doing this for nearly a year, it stopped working and SuperDuper! now says it can no longer find my iDisk. Indeed in SD!'s 'from' pop up menu, my iDisk no longer appears in the list, even though I see it in the Finder sidebar and it seems to behave normally otherwise.

It seems to have started around the time I changed routers (from one Time Capsule to its free replacement). Could there be some address path that I need to reset? Anyone have any other explanations?

[dnanian]

You were backing up your iDisk? Are you no longer synchronizing it locally, perhaps? I ask because we can't copy from a network volume...

[Michael@wengam]

Yes, well done, that was part of it. During a MobileMe reset I had accidentally put iDisk Sync to 'off'. Setting it back to 'on' made my iDisk appear in SD!'s 'from' menu.

The old schedule doesn't run using 'Copy Now', however, saying that the source disk can not be located.

Should I delete the old schedule and make a new one?

Should I delete the old disk image and make a new one?

[dnanian]

Yes, you'll have to recreate the schedule. You don't have to delete the image.

[Michael@wengam]

Thank you. I deleted my daily, weekly and monthly schedules, then re-set each schedule pointing at the original disk images. I also ran them all to check they would work using 'Copy Now'.

Thanks again for your help.

PS: I recently posted this on the Apple Discussion Forums, in answer to a user who wanted to back up their iDisk. Another user helpfully pointed out that you should exclude these disk images from your Time Machine backups because otherwise the whole image, possibly several GB, will be backed up every day. I don't know if that is really true for a sparsebundle, but for good measure I added these disk images to my Time Machine excluded files.

[dnanian]

Sure, but don't exclude them from your SuperDuper! backups.

[Michael@wengam]

Yes, the three disk image backups of my iDisk are all located on my boot drive and therefore included in my SuperDuper! backups.

In fact, my MacPro contains four 1TB drives: boot drive, daily clone, weekly clone and monthly clone, all clones being made by SuperDuper! So each one of those physical internal drives has a 'daily', 'weekly' and 'monthly' cloned image of my iDisk. In the end, my iDisk is backed up three times on my boot drive and of course three times on each clone drive, making a total of 12 copies.

[dnanian]

Excellent: lots of healthy redundancy there!