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flipp Author

Level 1

8 points

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

Top-ranking reply

xnav

Level 5

7,095 points

Posted on May 4, 2009 4:35 PM

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.

View in context

27 replies

flipp Author

Level 1

8 points

May 6, 2009 11:35 AM in response to xnav

I tried this procedure. If Time Machine is disabled or no backup device selected, everything is fine. Macintosh HD has its correct metallic icon. But:

Then I re-enable Time Machine, re-select my Backup HD -> still fine, Macintosh HD metallic icon, Backup HD green icon.

Reboot -> Macintosh HD green icon, Backup HD green icon.

There are no console errors btw.

xnav

Level 5

7,095 points

May 6, 2009 1:04 PM in response to flipp

Bummer, maybe changing the name of the Mac HD and/or the Backup volume, run disk verify/repair? Just wild stabs now, sorry! A Google does show other users have had the issue of Mac HD with the wrong icon. The error message in your original post seems to be unique to you.

Jeremy P

Level 3

740 points

May 6, 2009 8:43 PM in response to flipp

One thing which would have the potential to solve your problem would be to restore your system to before the aborted clone was made. That should reset whatever Time Machine files are causing your problems. There may of course be reasons why you would rather just jettison the backups, but be aware that the problem may be with a Time Machine file installed on your Macintosh HD which Time Machine uses to identify a backup disk.

flipp Author

Level 1

8 points

May 7, 2009 2:08 AM in response to Jeremy P

Jeremy P -- Yes, you are right. I still have no definate clue, whether the problem resides on my Macintosh HD or on my Backup HD.

Restoring the state from before my erroneous clone is not feasible for me, because this happened about two weeks ago.

Bummer. Thank you for your answers anyway, especially for your patience, xnav.

At least I found another post in this forum describing exactly my problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6540443#6540443

xnav

Level 5

7,095 points

May 7, 2009 9:06 AM in response to flipp

That last entry in that post suggests that rebuilding the partition on the external HD will fix the problem. I would rename the volume as well.

flipp Author

Level 1

8 points

May 8, 2009 1:07 AM in response to xnav

Renamed the Time Machine volume, re-selected it in the Preferences -> No help.

And now, this is getting really, really strange:

I cloned the Time Machine volume to another disk, selected this disk as Time Machine’s target, rebooted -> Everything was fine.

Formatted the original Time Machine partition, gave it another name, cloned the content back, selected this volume as a target, rebooted -> Same problem again.

xnav

Level 5

7,095 points

May 8, 2009 7:41 AM in response to flipp

Has the UUID of the original TM HD remained the same through the reformat and renaming? I thought the repartitioning might assign it a new one.

xnav

Level 5

7,095 points

May 8, 2009 7:59 AM in response to flipp

BTW, what is the 'Device / Media Name' of your Mac HD and original TM HD? Use

diskutil info disk#

to find it, where # is a single digit representing the whole HD.

xnav

Level 5

7,095 points

May 8, 2009 8:41 AM in response to flipp

I see the folks at CCC weren't very friendly. BTW, you weren't the only one reporting the [problem|http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=12656&highlight=machine+icon ] there.

flipp Author

Level 1

8 points

May 8, 2009 10:29 AM in response to xnav

Hi xnav,

the UUID of the TM HD definately changed after re-formatting. I did not check the 'Device / Media Name' though.

As I had some spare time today and as I will need a solid system the next weeks, I just backupped my Macintosh HD, re-installed the OS und used the migration assistant to copy back files. At this moment I am installing necessary software updates and I will then re-connect my external HD with a freshly formatted TM partition and hope my problem is fixed.

I will report my results as soon as I am finished.

PS: Concerning support at CCC forums I am indeed a bit disappointed. CCC is an excellent product, but it is sad that they do not want to support Time Machine specific questions and problems. That said, I decided to switch to SuperDuper! for cloning purposes.

flipp Author

Level 1

8 points

May 8, 2009 11:17 PM in response to flipp

flipp wrote:
As I had some spare time today and as I will need a solid system the next weeks, I just backupped my Macintosh HD, re-installed the OS und used the migration assistant to copy back files. At this moment I am installing necessary software updates and I will then re-connect my external HD with a freshly formatted TM partition and hope my problem is fixed.

I will report my results as soon as I am finished.

Problem seems to be solved.

My lessons learned:

1) cloning a system to a Time Machine partition with CCC seems to be a bad idea (although it was my fault)

2) Migration Assistant is a great tool which recovered 99,9 % of my system from my backup (except Developer Tools which I had to re-install manually)

Anyway, thank you for your effort, guys -- especially xnav!

May 24, 2009 8:04 AM in response to flipp

I had the same thing happen to me today. My startup HD is mistaken for the TM and not the external.
I think a common link is the external drive. I had done a Super Duper on my external before I upgraded to 10.5.7, then later decided to make that FW drive a TM backup. I didn't erase the FW drive first, though and just selected it through TM. Now when I disconnect it, TM tries to use my internal startup disk (this is on my MacBook Pro.
I wonder if I should erase the external, repartition it, then try again. Anyone else try that?
Thanks

Macintosh HD showing up with Time Machine drive icon