Macintosh HD showing up with Time Machine drive icon

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Macintosh HD showing up with Time Machine drive icon

Hi there,

I wanted to clone my Macintosh HD on a dedicated external disk using Carbon Copy Cloner. But accidentaly I selected my Time Machine Volume as a destination. So I cloned the entire content of Macintosh HD to my Time Machine disk.

I noticed this a few days later and manually deleted the cloned content on my Time Machine disk. I had to re-select the disk in Time Machine’s System Preferences. At first everything worked well, Time Machine continued to create its incremental backups. But there is one problem which I discovered later:

My Macintosh HD now shows up with a Time Machine icon and my system really seems to treat it as a Time Machine disk. When my real Time Machine volume is not connected to the computer, it even tries to create a backup to the disk itself:

-----
04.05.09 16:51:49 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd\[8881\] Starting standard backup
04.05.09 16:51:49 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd\[8881\] Cookie file is not readable or does not exist at path: /.0023xxxxxxxx
04.05.09 16:51:49 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd\[8881\] Volume at path / does not appear to be the correct backup volume for this computer. (Cookies do not match)
04.05.09 16:51:54 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd\[8881\] Backup failed with error: 18
-----

I already completely disabled Time Machine, deleted Time Machine’s preferences and did several restarts -- but with no success so far.

I know this might sound rather weird. Anyway, I would appreciate any hint on how to restore the original state.

Best regards,
qqilihq.

Message was edited by: flipp

Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on May 4, 2009 4:22 PM

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Answer 1

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xnav

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May 4, 2009 4:35 PM in response to flipp

It sounds as if you wound up naming your external Time Machine volume 'Macintosh HD'. If so, you must rename it to something else to eliminate the problem.

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Answer 2

flipp Author

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May 4, 2009 4:43 PM in response to xnav

No, the name was not affected, it is still labeled 'Backup'.

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Answer 3

xnav

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May 4, 2009 4:57 PM in response to flipp

OK, then I would remove 'Backup' from Time Machine my selecting 'Change Disk' in the TM settings and specify 'None'. Check the Mac HD icon, if normal then use Disk Utility to Erase 'Backup' and try turning TM on again.

WARNING!!! You will lose your backup data!!

Message was edited by: xnav

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Answer 4

flipp Author

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May 4, 2009 4:57 PM in response to xnav

xnav,

of course this could be the last solution. But I would rather like to keep my existing backups. I really hope there is a better solution.

qqilihq.

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Answer 5

xnav

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May 4, 2009 5:02 PM in response to flipp

I suspect when you manually removed the Mac HD files from 'Backup' you missed a hidden file that's causing the problem, did you look for hidden files?

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Answer 6

flipp Author

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May 4, 2009 5:07 PM in response to xnav

Yes; I also removed hidden files which were copied over from Macintosh HD. Content of /Volumes/Backup:

-----
-r-------- 1 me admin 16B 4 Mai 22:50 .0023xxxxxxxx
-rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6,0K 2 Mai 20:55 .DS_Store
drwx------ 3 me staff 102B 1 Dez 23:09 .Spotlight-V100/
d-wx-wx-wt 3 me staff 102B 5 Mai 01:00 .Trashes/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root staff 0B 30 Nov 20:10 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
srwxrwxrwx 1 root admin 0B 21 Apr 21:55 .dbfseventsd=
drwx------@ 474 me staff 16K 5 Mai 01:00 .fseventsd/
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 root staff 102B 1 Dez 23:09 Backups.backupdb/
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 63K 25 Apr 19:29 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 2B 30 Nov 23:45 Desktop DF
-----

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Answer 7

xnav

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May 4, 2009 5:16 PM in response to flipp

For what it's worth, here's mine, I suspect your .0023xxxxxx file is wrong.


drwxrwxrwt@ 8 root admin 272 May 4 05:28 ../
-r-------- 1 root wheel 16 Nov 21 2007 .0017f20c7d16
-rw-rw-r--@ 1 me staff 6148 Apr 27 13:15 .DS_Store
drwx------ 3 root staff 102 Nov 21 2007 .Spotlight-V100/
drwxrwxrwt@ 3 me staff 102 Jan 15 2008 .TemporaryItems/
d-wx-wx-wt 3 root staff 102 May 4 04:46 .Trashes/
-rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 0 Apr 27 13:37 .com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent
-rw-r--r-- 1 root staff 0 Nov 21 2007 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
drwx------ 47 root staff 1598 May 4 13:40 .fseventsd/
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 root staff 102 Jan 6 2008 Backups.backupdb/
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root staff 1024 Jul 22 2008 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root staff 2 Jul 22 2008 Desktop DF

or maybe your .dbfseventsd= file.

Message was edited by: xnav

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Answer 8

flipp Author

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May 5, 2009 12:47 AM in response to xnav

.0023xxxxxx has of course its correct name based on my MAC address. For posting here I just replaced some digits with x because of privacy reasons.

I povisionally removed the .0023xxxxx and the .dbfseventsd symlink and rebooted.

But my problem is still present.

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Answer 9

xnav

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May 5, 2009 9:06 AM in response to flipp

Check if the UUID'S are the same, use +diskutil info disk###+ .

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Answer 10

flipp Author

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May 5, 2009 1:50 PM in response to xnav

UUIDs are different for both volumes.

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Answer 11

xnav

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May 5, 2009 2:22 PM in response to flipp

Is there a Backups.backupdb directory on your Mac HD volume?

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Answer 12

flipp Author

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May 5, 2009 2:25 PM in response to xnav

No, no Backups.backupdb on my Macintosh HD.

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Answer 13

xnav

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May 5, 2009 5:34 PM in response to flipp

Now I suspect something is amiss in your /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist or some other hidden configuration file. This because, if I boot an instance of Leopard (with TM turned off) on a second internal HD, the new instance shows my normal TM volume icon as just a Firewire drive, not a TM drive.
I'm afraid that the only solution may be to force TM to start from scratch, sorry I couldn't be of help.

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Answer 14

flipp Author

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May 5, 2009 7:46 PM in response to xnav

xnav, thank you anyway.

I already deleted /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist ... but, without success. I will wait until tomorrow and hope someone else comes up with a solution, elsewise I will re-format my Time Machine volume.

flipp.

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Answer 15

xnav

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May 5, 2009 8:39 PM in response to flipp

I would:
1. Turn off TM
2. Eject the external backup drive and disconnect the cable
3. Reboot
4. Turn on TM, note the console errors, then turn off again.
5. Change TM Disk to None.
6. Reboot and see if icon is fixed.
If it is then just maybe you won't have to reformat and can set the TM disk back to the external HD. If the icon isn't fixed, I doubt reformatting will do any good.

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