Time Machine IS killing or corrupting disks

MaplePub wrote:
These posts about people running Disk Warrior in Leopard are scary. DW and TT Pro have issued warnings NOT to use their utilities in Leopard or on Leopard drives until they update them for Leopard.

According to Alsoft, DiskWarrior will repair Leopard disks except for File Vaults and permissions but should not be run from Leopard. The link has more information about what will happen if DiskWarrior is run from Leopard that I have not included in the quote from Alsoft's site. http://supportdb.alsoft.com:591/FMPro?-db=alsoftsupport&-lay=main&-sortfield=Dat e&-sortorder=descend&Keywords=leopard&Product=%22%22&-op=lte&Date=%2f%2f&-max=15 &-format=AlsoftSupport-qa.html&-script=counter&-token=191&-Skip=0&-find

+I am running Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard). What is the compatibility of DiskWarrior?+

Answer

+DiskWarrior 4.0 will successfully rebuild a disk that has Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard installed or a disk that has been attached to a computer running Leopard.+

+However, some operating system functionality has changed within Leopard itself. As such, there are some compatibility issues when running an installed copy of DiskWarrior 4.0 while started up from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Alsoft currently recommends that you do not run DiskWarrior 4.0 while the computer is started from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.+

+Instead, to run DiskWarrior, you should start up the computer from either:+

+1) A DiskWarrior 4.0 CD.+

+2) Any disk that starts up in 10.4.x and then run DiskWarrior 4.0.+

+An updated version of DiskWarrior that has complete Leopard compatibility will be released soon as a free download for existing owners of DiskWarrior 4.0.+

+What you can expect when running DiskWarrior 4.0 under Mac OS X 10.4.x and rebuilding a Leopard disk.+

+All features work as expected with two exceptions:+

+1) You should not use any utility to repair permissions of a Leopard start up disk while started from Mac OS X 10.4.x or earlier. Permissions will either not be be repaired or will be repaired improperly. This is true whether you repair permissions with Apple's Disk Utility, DiskWarrior, or any other third-party utility. Regardless of which utility you use, the same service within Mac OS X is used to perform the actual permissions repair so the behavior is always the same.+

+To repair permissions of a Leopard startup disk, be sure you've always started your Mac from Leopard. Alsoft also recommends using only the Disk Utility included with Leopard to repair permissions until an updated version of DiskWarrior is released.+

+Note: If you have used any utility to repair permissions of a Leopard startup disk while started from Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier, Alsoft recommends that you perform an upgrade install of Leopard over your existing Leopard install. This will restore any changed permissions to their original values without altering your data.+

+2) FileVaults created while started from Leopard are not visible to DiskWarrior 4.0 and cannot be rebuilt (repaired).+

Where did you get the disc from? Have you ever booted OS X off that disc? Have you made sure it was using either the APM or GUID partion tables (and not Master Boot Record)?

Not sure I'm following you, but here goes.

Where did I get the disk from - I'm assuming you mean Leopard 10.5. I ordered it directly from Apple.

Have I ever booted OS X off that disk - Do you mean the external hard drive? No. I have a PPC. The last I heard, one can't boot from the external drive.

APM or GUID - From what I read, PPC users should use APM, Intel macs should use GUID. I'm using APM since I have a Power Mac G5.

To make your drive useable again, but not for TM, you might look at my prior post. If there is something unclear in it, I would happy to provide further explanation.

Not sure myself about Will's remarks, but I think that he was trying to insure that you had the external drive formatted in HFS+. I do not beleive that APM or Guid matters in the case of the external drive. I would be surprised if either did not work.

You can boot from an external firewire drive. I do it all the time, but a usb drive will not work. For ppc, the drive has to be APM; and for intel, the drive must be guid. Also, you have to install MacOSX on the external drive. When you boot, you just hold the option key and eventually the screen will show your boot options, but this is not persistant. If I remember correctly, the way to continuously boot from one drive or other is to use System Preferences/System/Startup Disk to select the boot drive and then reboot.

HTH

Message was edited by: Bob White

myheadhurts wrote:
Not sure I'm following you, but here goes.

Where did I get the disk from - I'm assuming you mean Leopard 10.5. I ordered it directly from Apple.

No; I was asking you where you got the hard disk from.

Have I ever booted OS X off that disk - Do you mean the external hard drive? No. I have a PPC. The last I heard, one can't boot from the external drive.

PowerPC-based Macs can boot off external FireWire drives. Intel-based Macs can boot off external FireWire and USB drives.

APM or GUID - From what I read, PPC users should use APM, Intel macs should use GUID. I'm using APM since I have a Power Mac G5.

Bob White wrote:
Not sure myself about Will's remarks, but I think that he was trying to insure that you had the external drive formatted in HFS+. I do not beleive that APM or Guid matters in the case of the external drive. I would be surprised if either did not work.

Whether your Time Machine drive is formatted with the APM or GUID partition table doesn't matter. But most drives come formatted for PCs, which use a Master Boot Record instead, and that won't work with Time Machine:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306932

Formatting a drive to HFS+ doesn't change its partition table. You need to make your drive use either APM or GUID if you want to use it with Time Machine. In Disk Utility, you can select which partition table to use by clicking on "Options…" under the Partition tab (you need to partition the drive for the change to take effect).

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the info. I was able to get my external drive (Iomega) running again. It was strange, I turned on my computer, then the external HD mounted with volumes, however, I received a message. Something like "the only reason you're seeing this HD is because it was unable to be repaired. You should reformat immediately."

I went into DU and sure enough, I was able to reformat and partition the drive again.

Thanks,

mhh

Will, thanks for the pointers. I was not aware of the fact that you can boot a usb drive on an intel machine and I agree with your pushing to find out how the drive was formatted. Also, I was not aware that one would format a drive HFS+ and not change the partition type to apm or guid just to keep everything in Apple's domain, but you are correct in that some people do not know that.

Myheadhurts, I am glad that it was that simple for you. I am only trying to offer some help on how to do some things. I have personally not run TM for very long and have not experienced the problems that some people here are experiencing. There just seemed to be some people who thought that they had lost the entire drive forever by sounds of their posts and yet others had figured out how to get their disks functional again which meant that it was possible.

I do know one thing from experience. Never experiment with live data and keep lots of backups.

One thing that I had forgotten to add. My G5 1.6 MHz didn't come with bluetooth. I had to use a bluetooth dongle. (D-Link DBT-120) I thought I had removed the dongle, but I hadn't. I did remove the dongle, was able to get the external HD running again.

Also, I tried TM again. This time it backed up my internal HD in under two hours and has been doing hourly backups since. Was the little dongle the cause to all my problems? I don't know. I haven't plugged the dongle back in and my computer is running smoothly. I'll give it a few more days before I try and plug the dongle back in to see if it was the culprit.

We shall see.

mhh

WD 500GB USB2 - Drive worked fine, and then gone. Unrepairable in Disk Utility, which reports is as a 26.7GB WD drive.

I too have been chasing this problem.
I have a 1.2G PPC iMac (also has a 160G Firewire disk attached), 1.4G PPC MiniMac and a current model 15" MacBook Pro.
At first I thought I was chasing a faulty disk.
The backup disk is a USB Seagate 500G FreeAgent Desktop.
The iMac and MiniMac kept cashing with kernel panics when the disk was connected to them, but at that stage I hadn't connected the issue to Time Machine. It had corrupted directories (but not all the time).
I used bootcamp on the MBP to run Seatools. Windows XP rebooted a couple of time and I got a few errors.
I now assumed it was the disk, till today.
At work I connected the disk to an HP windows box and ran SeaTools. No problems.
I then connected it to my work Intel iMac and ran a whole heap of "mkfile's" with no problems. Next I stoked up Time Machine. It ran for the whole afternoon, no problems.
Coincidentally, someone I work with has a Topfield 5000 PVR which he connects to a Mac mini using USB. Since Leapoard it has become VERY unreliable and is about to revert to Tiger.
Our conclusion was that there must be some sort of USB issue. Maybe the newer iMac worked because it has newer USB hardware that works correctly while the older PPC and MBP have signal level and/or driver problems. The conclusion was to try a power hub.
This evening I tried a powered hub on the Seagate. Within minutes of starting TM and pointing it to the Seagate, it had a kernel panic. Additionally, the Mac mini that was also pointing to the iMac got a kernel panic too, even though it was pointing to my other Firewire disk (on the PPC iMac). I set the Firewire disk as the back out about a week ago (till I sorted out the USB disk) and has worked perfectly.
There are now possibly two issues.
1. A USB problem - in that the connection is not reliable
2. A Time Machine problem - causes kernel panics and can take other machine out running TM.

For what it's worth, I've been doing my TM backups over USB to a SATA drive that is in a Mad Dog (from CompUSA) SATA-to-USB external enclosure. The drive itself is a 300 gig Western Digital drive that I removed from my G5 and put into this enclosure. Haven't had a hiccup.

It's a GUID partition, and formated as journaled HFS+.

My internal drive is a 250 gig WD that I removed from an external USB case - $159 at BestBuy - and had it put into the machine. Has worked great.

Not to deny anyone else's problems, but I've been working ok.

Hope Apple gets a handle on what's going on with TM!

I also have a Sonnet eSata card in the machine, connected to a Seagate external sata drive. Using .Mac's Backup with it, and it's fast and works great. This is my nervous way of minimizing the possibility of a problem. TM on one drive, and Backup on another.

I emailed Alsoft (DW):

Just D/L'd 10.5 ( Leopard. I have seen several references to your
product on the discussion boards at apple.com, all in agreement that
DW v4 should NOT be used on Leopard, until an update is made available
by you. When will such an update be ready for 10.5 ??

Thanks,
Fred


Tech @ Disk Warrior wrote back:

The reports that you have read are incorrect.

As stated on the Alsoft support website at the link:

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html

DiskWarrior 4.0 will successfully rebuild a disk that has Mac OS X 10.5
Leopard installed or a disk that has been attached to a computer running
Leopard.

However, some operating system functionality has changed within Leopard
itself. As such, there are some compatibility issues when running an
installed copy of DiskWarrior 4.0 while started up from Mac OS X 10.5
Leopard. Alsoft currently recommends that you do not run DiskWarrior 4.0
while the computer is started from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Instead, to run DiskWarrior, you should start up the computer from either:

1) A DiskWarrior 4.0 CD.

2) Any disk that starts up in 10.4.x and then run DiskWarrior 4.0.
An updated version of DiskWarrior that has complete Leopard
compatibility will be released soon as a free download for existing
owners of DiskWarrior 4.0.

*

-- What you can expect when running DiskWarrior 4.0 under Mac OS X
10.4.x and rebuilding a Leopard disk.

All features work as expected with two exceptions:

1) You should not use any utility to repair permissions of a Leopard
start up disk while started from Mac OS X 10.4.x or earlier. Permissions
will either not be be repaired or will be repaired improperly. This is
true whether you repair permissions with Apple's Disk Utility,
DiskWarrior, or any other third-party utility. Regardless of which
utility you use, the same service within Mac OS X is used to perform the
actual permissions repair so the behavior is always the same.

To repair permissions of a Leopard startup disk, be sure you've always
started your Mac from Leopard. Alsoft also recommends using only the
Disk Utility included with Leopard to repair permissions until an
updated version of DiskWarrior is released.

Note: If you have used any utility to repair permissions of a Leopard
startup disk while started from Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier, Alsoft
recommends that you perform an upgrade install of Leopard over your
existing Leopard install. This will restore any changed permissions to
their original values without altering your data.

2) FileVaults created while started from Leopard are not visible to
DiskWarrior 4.0 and cannot be rebuilt (repaired).

*

-- What you can expect when running DiskWarrior 4.0 under Mac OS X 10.5
and rebuilding a Leopard disk.

While not recommended (and discouraged), if you do run DiskWarrior 4.0
while started from Mac OS X 10.5 you might encounter some problems such as:

1) You cannot rebuild FileVaults or disk images.

2) In step 9 (comparing directories) of a rebuild, the progress bar
might get to 100% even though the comparison step is not finished and
will continue to execute.

3) When performing Check All Files and Folders the progress bar might
get to 100% even though the check is not finished and will continue to
execute.

4) After rebuilding a disk, DiskWarrior may report that some files or
folders have had their permissions changed. This is inaccurate and the
permissions have not been changed.

To repeat, an updated version of DiskWarrior that has complete Leopard
compatibility will be released soon as a free download for existing
owners of DiskWarrior 4.0.

TM is still running correctly after a couple of days. Even after installing the update. Still keeping my fingers crossed. 🙂

I installed Leopard 10.5.0 about a week ago. I successfully used TM for one back up a day since then. As of today, when I turned on the external hard drive-EHD (SmartDisk 120GB firewire, purchased from apple and used successfully with G4 Tower and MacMini in Panther) there was no icon on the desk top, or in the finder. The disk did not mount when turned on. I turned off the EHD, and connected it to my macBook which is Panther. The macBook does not recognize the EHD either. I'm still waiting (after close to 1.5 hours on hold) to talk to a product specialist at apple about this. The regular tech support person said she didn't know anything about this I'm reading all of the user chat about this, and it looks like Apple knows nothing about this yet. Thinking that maybe it was a 10.5.0 glitch, i upgraded to 10.5.1 after the problem started, but this has not resolved the issue.

Time Machine needs to go back in time to alfa. After several TM backups my 200gb Lacie would not mount via firewire connection anymore. I had to hook it up to my old POS PC (?????) and reformat the disk. Then my MBP saw it again.

Great idea bad execution. Come on Apple live up to your TV commercials.
Hi I'm a Mac..