PROBLEM: (BUG?) Copied disc (or not?)- files not visible in Finder

[stevea]

Tried using SuperDuper to make a backup copy of a startup disk (not the current startup disk).

Upon inspection, the copy does not contain all the files from the original disk...

Upon further inspection, it appears that most files have indeed copied, but many of the root-level directories are invisible. However, they should not be invisible!

What's going on here??? Why is this happening?

It appears to be a bug or some kind of problem with SuperDuper...



SuperDuper! 1.5.5 (v74)
Mac OS X 10.3.9
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[dnanian]

The Finder has a number of bugs, Stevea, that often causes it to not refresh. Try relaunching it (Control click its icon in the dock), or log out and in, and I think you'll find the missing files will appear.

[stevea]

Thanks, relaunching Finder refreshed the list.

This was a Finder bug that I hadn't ever seen before, despite some of its annoying anomalies. On the other hand, there are lots of bugs in lots of OS X backup utilities, so seeing this caused a bit of consternation.

Request: Please document this problem in a "Troubleshooting" section in SuperDuper user guide...

Thanks!
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[sjk]

Originally Posted by dnanian

The Finder has a number of bugs, Stevea, that often causes it to not refresh. Try relaunching it (Control click its icon in the dock)

Make that option-click.

[dnanian]

Actually, Control-Option Click! (Sorry about that, people.)

[sjk]

Option Click-and-hold is what I meant.

[dnanian]

Yep, that'll work too.

[dnanian]

We don't do any kind of "explicit" verification, since the disk controller itself performs that task for us.

Our general take is that you don't ask the Finder to verify things when you copy, and you don't do it when you write a file to disk with an editor (or whatever). That's because a hard disk has "built-in verification" -- its controller flags errors when they occur, on either read or write.

If we hit an error like this, we stop, because there's been a problem. But compare-after-write would both take time and cause unnecessary wear and tear on the drive.

(This is different from writing to a medium that is inherently prone to failure, like "older" Travan tapes, CDs or floppies...)

Hope that helps!