Please Help. Have not been able to back up with Time Machine since September.

rebsblack wrote:

OK. S.M.A.R.T. says "Verified"

Good. That's no guarantee it won't fail, but it seems to be ok.

I guess I need to look into the second external drive. But maybe in the meantime put a clone on the current one. (Even after reading the article, I'm still confused as to what the clone entails and what I need to do to maintain it.)

If you use CCC, after the first full clone, just run it periodically (or schedule it so it happens automatically), and CCC will update it. That will take longer, and use more of your system, than a Time Machine backup because of the way it works, but far less than the first full copy. (I have my Mac set to wake up early each morning, and have CCC scheduled to update the clone a couple of minutes later.)

But - is there still the need to reboot/wipe clean/start fresh at this point since harware says okay?

Yes (unless you want to try Disk Warrior). The file system on your internal HD is damaged. It will not fix itself, and may get worse (causing other problems) if you don't fix it.

Is this something that I can just keep working with as long as I do backups and figure out cloning?

You can, but other things may go wrong, possibly corrupting or deleting some of your data. It's entirely unpredictable.

Or - would it be better to wipe clean.

Yes.

Lastly - won't the problems be on the time machine and clone backups and therefore just move right on over again when I restart and upload???

No. Time Machine and CCC back up all your files, not the file system directories, catalogs, etc., where the damage is. The problems with the directory could mean some things don't get backed-up, but if data is already lost, there's nothing you can do about it now.

(There are ways to do a "block copy," which would copy the file system directory, but that won't happen in this situation.)

Okay. Currently cloning into a partition on the external drive that I have.

Then, if I understand correctly, I restart my computer holding down the option key. I choose the clone. I make sure everything's okay - not sure how to verify that all my ducks are in a row...but okay.

Make sure it starts, connects to the Internet, etc. Browse your data -- photos, music, documents, etc. You can't verify everything, of course, but spot-check.

As soon as it starts, turn Time Machine OFF (so it doesn't try to do a backup).

Then I zero it out from the Leopard start up disk.

Correct (actually, you can do that while running from the Clone). And remember, that will take a while, as it writes zeros to the entire disk.

Then I'm confused. How do I re-clone back to my computer?

Use CCC again, but swap source and destination.

And how do I make sure that whatever problems I'm having don't just clone themselves right back on?

After you start back up from the restored internal HD, run Verify Disk. And it won't hurt to make sure you get connected to the internet and check your photos, etc., as before.

Note that your next Time Machine backup will be a full one -- everything you put back on the internal is treated as new, so will be backed-up again (Snow Leopard and Lion don't always do that, but Leopard does).

It's late here, and I'll be going to bed soon, so if I don't answer until tomorrow it's because I'm snoozing. 😉

rebsblack wrote:

One last thing. I restart it from the clone. So in this entire process of wiping clean and re-starting fresh I don't need to use/access/boot from - or whatever the term/process would be - Time Machine?

Correct. You could do a full system restore from your Time Machine backups instead of re-cloning, but as long as you've used CCC to make the clone, you might as well use it to re-clone.

If you want to restore the TM backups instead, see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14.

I doubt it'll fix your problem, but...

"Try Disk Utility

1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.

2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)

*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*

3. Click the First Aid tab.

4. Select your Mac OS X volume.

5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Pondini is great, absolutely no doubt, & master with TM, but I consider TM the absolute wosrt backup App outside of no backup at all for reliabilty or usefulness, likely with much effort he could help me have my first succsessful restore, though backups seemed fine, when it came time to restore, even though it seemed to complete fine, the restore would never boot... luckily I had Clones that cured the problem. 🙂

rebsblack wrote:

. . .

If it's disk utility that I need, then maybe it's install disk 1 while holding down the C key like I did earlier.

Our posts may have crossed, but you can do that using the copy of Disk Utility on the clone, while running from it.

(The advice to do it from the Install disc was when I though you were going to make the clone from it, not CCC.)

BDAqua wrote:

. . .

I consider TM the absolute wosrt backup App outside of no backup at all for reliabilty or usefulness, likely with much effort he could help me have my first succsessful restore, though backups seemed fine, when it came time to restore, even though it seemed to complete fine, the restore would never boot

Thanks for your earlier help, and kind words, but do you really have to post this, in thread after thread? Do you really think it's helpful in any way? How is it supposed to help a relative newbie who's nervous enough already? Do you not see how many times I recommend keeping a clone in addition to Time Machine backups?

Please, enough already.

rebsblack wrote:

Pondini - IT WORKED!!!!

Yay! 🙂

* I had about 99 GB of data on my hard drive before. I now only have 95 GB.

That's probably fine. There are various system work files, caches, etc., that CCC omits. These are rebuilt as necessary. See Frequently Asked Questions in CCC's help for details.

And it's possible the directory problem was causing an inaccurate reading in the first place.

* Once it was re-cloned back to my hard drive, while still running from the clone, I clicked Verify and it came okay. At this time Repair Disk was showing as an available option. When I rebooted from the normal hard drive and went to disk utility, Repair Disk is now grayed out. I ran verify disk and it's still okay. Is it a red flag to have Repair Disk be grayed out?

No, that's exactly correct. You can't repair the disk you're running from (kinda like a brain surgeon operating on himself 😉). That's why you had to start from your Install disk to do the repair when this first came up.

* Now that I can use Time Machine and my Disk Utility verifies my drive and the hardware test came back okay, do I need to be concerned that my hard drive is on the way out and start shopping around for a computer upgrade? Or is the process of zeroing out and starting fresh kind of giving it a new life for a little while?

Unfortunately, it's impossible to say. It's passed all the tests, but it is 3.5 years old. It may run for another 5 years or more, or fail next week. That's one of the reasons to be sure you always have good backups (preferably at least two).

It's probably worthwhile to check the S.M.A.R.T. status now and then -- that often gives some advance notice of an impending failure.

Since you had some sort of directory problem, it's probably also worth running Verify Disk occasionally, at least for a while. We don't know what caused that; it could have been a forced power-off (or power failure), a minor disk problem, or something screwy (pardon the technical term) with OSX. It probably won't happen again, but if it does, keep an eye on things.

Okay. I know I've said it several times already, but THANK YOU!

You're quite welcome. Glad to help, and happy it's sorted out.