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User profile for user: Happy Dad
Happy Dad Author
User level: Level 1
99 points

Restore Failure - error 254 in Disk Utility

Following up from this post http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1507251&tstart=0 i set about doing a restore on my Macintosh HD partition from and external Macintosh HD.dmg image.

To my horror, the computer responds with

Restore Failure
Could not validate source - error 254

HELP! This image has my only back up of my macbook. Any ideas?

How did I get here? My mac would not update its firmware has it turned out my ungraded harddrive still had a MBR partition scheme and not a GUID partition scheme. So I booted from the install disk, then (and perhaps this is my problem) I went into the disk utility after selecting language but prior to selecting continue. I imaged the Macintosh HD to an external USB hard drive. As per the previous email, I repartitioned the hard drive to GUID, after realizing that I needed to press continue on the install menus. Once partitioned I went to restore image from the previously saved image.

I now get this error.

I am going to proceed with a fresh install of OSX (I'm assuming I will be able to open up the image and get my data off it again) but if you can come up with a way to just restore the image I would be hugely thankfull.

Macbook 2.2Ghz Santa-Rosa, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 4GB iPod Nano (1G), 8GB iPod Nano (2G)

Posted on May 1, 2008 8:00 PM

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User profile for user: Mac Davis
Mac Davis
User level: Level 1
8 points

Posted on May 3, 2008 4:16 PM

Happy Dad, I get this error all the time and hate it because it is just a dead end for me.

For example, being able to have Windows XP, Vista, various distributions of Linux, and Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard all on one portable external drive would be very convenient, but I run into this error. I would like to know the cause of this, and what I can do to avoid this in the future.
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User profile for user: Mac Davis
Mac Davis
User level: Level 1
8 points

May 3, 2008 4:16 PM in response to Happy Dad

Happy Dad, I get this error all the time and hate it because it is just a dead end for me.

For example, being able to have Windows XP, Vista, various distributions of Linux, and Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard all on one portable external drive would be very convenient, but I run into this error. I would like to know the cause of this, and what I can do to avoid this in the future.
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User profile for user: ScofieldKid
ScofieldKid
User level: Level 1
9 points

May 21, 2008 6:20 PM in response to ScofieldKid

Ah, I think I figured this one out.

What is going on here is the original is a VOLUME image.

So the source and destionation need to be VOLUMES, not he .dmg.

So... attach a drive, and use the original VOLUME of the .dmg,
not the .dmg itself as the source, and make the target a VOLUME as well.

I had both of these as partitions on an external USB 2.5" notebook drive.
That was split in half. Now I'm recovering the 1st volume to the 2nd half,
and it appears to be working now!

Eureka!
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User profile for user: DonH49
DonH49
User level: Level 6
16,710 points

May 3, 2008 7:04 PM in response to Happy Dad

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1618



MIDI Manager Errors
-250 midiNoClientErr no client with that ID found
-251 midiNoPortErr no port with that ID found
-252 midiTooManyPortsErr too many ports already installed in the system
-253 midiTooManyConsErr too many connections made
-254 midiVConnectErr pending virtual connection created
-255 midiVConnectMade pending virtual connection resolved
-256 midiVConnectRmvd pending virtual connection removed
-257 midiNoConErr no connection exists between specified ports
-258 midiWriteErr couldn't write to all connected ports
-259 midiNameLenErr name supplied is longer than 31 characters
-260 midiDupIDErr duplicate client ID
-261 midiInvalidCmdErr command not supported for port type

Message was edited by: Smokerz
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User profile for user: Happy Dad
Happy Dad Author
User level: Level 1
99 points

May 4, 2008 8:38 PM in response to DonH49

Sorry that did not help me at all.

I reloaded Leopard from scratch (that takes a long time..) and I tried to open up my image file so try to pull of my data.

Still no luck!

Finder gives me the following warning.

The following disk images failed to mount
Image
Macintosh HD
Reason
no mountable file systems

Any ideas anyone??
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User profile for user: Sam Kivi
Sam Kivi
User level: Level 1
25 points

May 20, 2008 5:48 AM in response to Happy Dad

Just adding that I'm also having this problem.

"Could not validate source - error 254"

I'm trying to restore an ISO (slipstreamed XP CD) to an external USB drive, to save me from burning dozens of cd's getting it right.
I get the same error if I convert to DMG or CDR

I'm guessing it's because the image file system is not HFS?

Happy Dad, Is the external drive which contains your backup image FAT32 or HFS? If it's FAT32, this might be the cause of your problem. Some information may be lost about the DMG when stored on FAT32 (that is just a guess- i don't really know at all)

Smokerz, besides your reply being really unhelpful, all that information is for OS 9 and earlier, as is clearly stated in the link you gave.
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Restore Failure - error 254 in Disk Utility

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