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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Hard Drive Back-Up

bwcarter - Oct 7, 2006 - 8:13 am

We have a Newer Technology mimiStack 250GB External Hard Drive FW. When we use Retrospect Express to back-up our internal hard drive, we get 7 execution errors of the type: different data size, different creation date, and different modification date. We are concerned that these errors may cause trouble if we ever have to restore our data from the external hard drive. Since we are not archiving, merely periodically duplicating our entire hard drive, do we really need to use Retrospect at all? Could we just drag our internal hard drive onto the miniStack and accomplish the desired result?
Thanks in advance.

philippe99 - Oct 7, 2006 - 9:23 am

Hi and welcome to macosx.com

No, you can't because of system privileges.
Backup/cloning software like Retrospect, Tri-backup or SuperDuper invoke deep level tools of the Unix system to copy system librairies,plug-ins, .. while respecting their priviliges such librairies have: the root privileges.
Because not being tagged 'root' by the simply drag-n-drop procedure you may use, the copied librairies will not be bootable at all.

Try to boot on the backup Retrospect has done: start the Mac while holding the Option key (the key with the 'alt' on it); you will be prompted with a screen showing all bootable partitions; if you do not see your external backup, it is bad; if yes, select it with the mouse and click on the right arrow to terminate the boot process
If the boot finishes, well, I guess you have a good system; play with it -try music, videos, spotlight, which call many specilized librairies

On the other hand, I guess the Retrospect version you have is OEM licensed, so you can call Retrospect to have more details on what these errors really involve

Regards
Philippe

bwcarter - Oct 8, 2006 - 2:54 pm

Philippe,
The Express version of Retrospect came with the miniStack. Do we really need to boot up from the external hard drive just to restore data that may have been lost due to a system or internal hard drive crash. After the computer has been repaired, couldn't we just reload the operating system and applications from the CDs and then retrive the data from the external hard drive? Thanks.

philippe99 - Oct 9, 2006 - 7:47 am

Well, for me, 'data' means Documents, Music, Videos, i.e all except System stuffs

If you plan to retrieve only the DATA, yes..
* you can re-install a fresh system by using the Install CDs/DVD that came with the Mac
then -and only then-
* copy back the DATA (music, documents, videos, ..) from the external drive to the internal drive by a simple drag-n-drop . If you do as admin, no problem. If not, you've only to respect this rule: the creator of the backup of some items must login into his account and drag back these items to their original place. So that user Y cannot drag back data backuped by user X.

But if you want to copy a system stuff, even if a QT plug-in, a Safari haxie, a Java update, ..., the answer is NO
If you want to clone back a full complete operating clone of your hard drive you made in the past to ensure having an emergency boot device, you must use Restropect Restore facility or boot on the mac OSX Install CD#1 or DVD and use the DiskUtility of this CD to clone back to your internal drive. But I guess the Backup you made with Retrospect was only simple data.

So, in summary and provided you're the Admin..
For simple data, you backup/restore by simple drag-n-drop.
For system stuffs you must use DU or the 3rd-party software to clone back system stuffs.

Hope it is clear now.
Phil