Backup Failed

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

You're trying to determine whether the problem is with the interface (USB vs FW) or the drive.

It's the drive: Sometimes it mounts, other times it doesn't; sometimes I can unmount and/or eject it, other times I can't. And if and when I can get to the actual volume, some of the folders are now empty; and if I attempt to drag & drop folders from my internal HD or my other SD! clone to replace them, I get messages telling me it can't be done, because they're in use! (Same results for either interface.)

It's trashed, I guess.

[dnanian]

Try moving it to USB and see if it starts behaving better, Nick.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Try moving it to USB and see if it starts behaving better, Nick.

Same results for either interface.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Nick

...

It's trashed, I guess.

Well, I decided I needed to reformat/reinitialize the drive. So, I opened DU and attempted to do so. However, my repeated attempts failed: After about 10 seconds of churning after I clicked the “partition” button, DU gave up and issued the error message: “Partition failed with the error: Could not unmount disk.”

I then tried to reformat/reinitialize via the USB interface as well, and that too was unsuccessful, but the error message was different: “Partition failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory.”

[dnanian]

Have you restarted your Mac?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Have you restarted your Mac?

Numerous times. This last time, the volume doesn't even appear—only the drive shows up, and it only shows up in DU, not in the Finder. (This has happened periodically before over these past few days, but now it happens all the time: The volume doesn't appear.)

[dnanian]

You may be having some more serious problems with your OS install. Getting memory allocation problems with stuff like this shouldn't happen. I'd reinstall Snow Leopard (equivalent of the old archive-and-install), and turn off any antivirus and similar apps you might have running.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

You may be having some more serious problems with your OS install. Getting memory allocation problems with stuff like this shouldn't happen. I'd reinstall Snow Leopard (equivalent of the old archive-and-install), and turn off any antivirus and similar apps you might have running.

Reinstall (the machine is only a few months old)?? Oy vey!

[dnanian]

That's certainly what I'd try. It's pretty painless, and you're getting terribly weird things here.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by dnanian

That's certainly what I'd try. It's pretty painless, and you're getting terribly weird things here.

Doing a full OS reinstall is painless? The last time I did that (previous machine, OS 10.5) it was anything but. Is SL inherently easier to reinstall?

[dnanian]

You just reinstall. It puts a fresh os under your existing applications and data. It shouldn't be difficult.

[sjk]

Originally Posted by dnanian

It shouldn't be difficult.

I agree that's generally true. When difficulties do occur with reinstalls they can be useful symptoms of specific problems that deserve attention to rectify so they're avoided in the future (if possible). Problematic reinstalls/updates can be a sign to consider managing a system differently.