SuperDuper back up fails repeatedly
I have a mid-2011 27" iMac Core i5, purchased in October, 2011. I've been trying to create a Mirror Backup from the latest version of SuperDuper (2.6.4 v89) to my external G-Tech drive — this used to work just fine — but now I keep getting a message that says "failed to copy files from Macintosh HD..."
My iMac HD is 1 TB
External HD is 3 TB (2 partitions)
– Mirror iMac: 1TB (used for SuperDuper mirror copy)
– Archive: 2 TB (used by OS Lion Time Machine)
"About this Mac" says:
– Mirror iMac: 985.73 GB free out of 1 TB
– Macintosh HD: 800.68 GB free out of 999.35 GB
So it is not, presumably, a question of space.
I did all of the steps outlined in the SuperDuper Help page re: "Out of Space" errors
– Ran Disk Utilities (booted from a flash drive, and ran DU on both the iMac and the external drive: no problems.)
– I ran "Erase then Copy" files
– I erased the Mirror iMac partition and reformatted with Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
The back up kept hanging up on a particular file. SO I sent an error report to Shirt Pocket and received this reply:
Lion - confusingly - is sometimes returning "disk full" errors when it can't read or write a file. In this case
Jan 30 15:36:27 macbook-pro SDCopy[365]: reading from /Users/jo/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/TV Shows/LOST/14 There's No Place Like Home, Pt. 3 (HD).m4v: Input/output error
the problem si reading from that particular Lost episode. This is likely because your internal drive is starting to fail.
Please navigate to that file in Finder and try to duplicate - not open or play - it. Do you get an error -36? If so, you'll need to delete it, empty your trash and give the copy another try.
I did try to copy the file, as suggested, and did get an "error -36". So I threw it away and retried the backup: it made it past the point where it had been failing, and copied almost all the files, but now is giving me a similar error message (same msg as before, but different file):
| 07:08:19 PM | Error | SDCopy: Error copying /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Magic GarageBand/02. Rock.mwand/Media/Big Stack 1#1.caf to /Volumes/Mirror iMac/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Magic GarageBand/02. Rock.mwand/Media/Big Stack 1#1.caf of type 8 due to error 28: No space left on device
I also tried to copy this file and it too gave me an "error -36."
I have looked through these forums and tried the only one that seemed to pertain (turning Time Machine off, which I did: no luck.)
Could my hard drive really be failing? I checked the serial no. of my iMac here: http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/ and it says that my hard drive is not affected by this particular recall.
I am NOT technical, so if anyone has any suggestions for me, please be merciful when giving instructions. It has taken me hours to get this far...😀
Thanks so much!
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)