Time Machine stopped working - SuperDuper involved?

[rdzman]

I cloned my TM drive (call it A, and the clone B) last Friday using a PPC Mac mini running 10.5.2 and SD 2.5. Since then, I've moved B to my MBP (running 10.5.1) where I was intending use it for TM backups (instead of A). After noticing some TM errors today, I ran Disk Repair on B and my internal and did not find any errors on either.

Then I noticed ownership issues on B on the new TM backups (since cloning), so I deleted all of the TM backups that were done since the clone and began examining specific troublesome files from the last TM backup *before* the clone operation and found differences between A and B. So, it isn't immediately after the clone, but Disk Utility hasn't reported any errors and TM shouldn't be messing with existing backups (except when it removes them), right? So, it would seem that the problem most likely happened during the clone.

Btw, I do have the SD log from the clone operation ... would you like to see it? Should we take this to e-mail?

[dnanian]

If there are no errors during the copy the log isn't going to provide much color.

I'm really not sure what to suggest. I've run and compared a large number of these, with multi-multi-million file copies without any changes at all to the file structure or ownership. It's kind of weird that you'd have a different experience.

Do you have a way to re-copy to see if the same file has an error if you do it again? Do two copies, back to back (with no TM activity - TM off) end up copying "no" files as it should?

[rdzman]

Aargh! ... a subsequent run of Verify Disk did turn up tons of errors on the cloned drive, so I don't know when that happened (must have been TM). I've reformatted the target drive and will re-do the clone again tonight. I'll re-run it immediately tomorrow morning to see if it copies no files. I'll post back to let you know if I have trouble again.

[visch1]

http://www.macfixit.com/index.php
Down a short way reports many TM problems.

[rdzman]

With a freshly reformatted disk, a clone followed by a smart update yielded 0 files copied and I don't see any anomalies w.r.t. ownership/permissions. Now I'll try moving the clone to my MBP and see if TM can handle it.

...

Great. Looks OK this time around. Hopefully, my TM won't get hosed by the upgrade to 10.5.2 ... but at least it looks like SD is doing it's job correctly. Thanks lots Dave!

[dnanian]

You bet, rdzman. Glad to help.

[rlfsoso]

Hi,
I wonder since this were all applications you had a problem with, could this maybe related to the new application-firewall changing the app-files? This is very much a wild guess and I thought they fixed this in 10.5.1 already.

Greetings, Rolf