What are your favorite backup apps?

It sounds like you partitioned the drive correctly. One reason for selecting the GUID partition scheme is discussed in "'You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume...' alert in Installer"

It's not clear if you were trying to do the backup via the One Touch button or directly with Retrospect. Again, for Tiger and Rosetta compatibility, you must have version 6.1.126, probably Retrospect Express as that's what I believe ships with the One Touch.

In Retrospect, to create a bootable Duplicate of your startup disk saved to a partition on your FireWire drive, after launching Retrospect, select Duplicate in the Immediate tab and then follow the prompts. The Source volume will be your startup disk, e.g Macintosh HD, and the Destination volume will be a partition on your FireWire drive: you'll make those selections accordingly. For details, see pages 58-60 of the Retrospect User's Guide, a PDF that should be in the same folder with Retrospect.

You should start a new topic if you need to discuss this issue further, since your questions here are getting far-afield of the original topic.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

your questions here are getting far-afield of the original topic.

Not so far afield from the reasoning behind the original answer to the original topic, though. 😉

You might consider creating a very small partition on the external drive, maybe 5 or 7 GB or less, on which to install a very spare 10.4 system. Only update the OS to the current version, perhaps install Java and QuickTime updates, as well.

Onto this partition, install your backup application and DiskWarrior or similar. When you want to back up your main system, boot into this small volume and run your backup utility from there. Doing it this way will help to assure the integrity of your backups (or clones) as the case may be. Do all of your troubleshooting from this small volume as well.

You can boot into safe mode in OS X by holding down the Shift key immediately after the startup chime. Release it when the spinning gear icon appears on the grey splash screen. A safe boot will take a minute or so longer than a normal boot, and you'll be required to log in.

Yes, you can repartition the drive easily in Disk Utility.

I would suggest using your MacBook Pro disc to install a system on the small partition.

You can use Flip4Mac and/or VLC media player to play .wmv files. Both are available at macupdate.com or versiontrackker.

Backup. Repartitioning erases the drive.

It doesn't seem as though the OP has created a viable backup to this point, so it really shouldn't be too much of an issue to create another partition.

Judging by how many people have viewed this topic, you are asking questions that other people have, too. That means that you are contributing to the general knowledge base by bringing up these questions in the first place, so there is nothing to feel bad about.

Let us know how the backup goes.

You wrote:

"After it was done, a few hours later it had 800 something errors."

You should not perform other activities while performing a backup, e.g. use other apps. Backing up in Safe Mode is a good idea, particularly with Tiger. See: "Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode."

I presume you had enabled Verification for your backup. Depending on the types of errors, these can sometimes be ignored. A handful of verification errors are cache or log files are not a concern: see my recent post here. WIth 800 execution errors, this could indicate that either you were doing a lot of work while the backup was in process, or you have a large number of files that may be damaged. Take a look at the execution log. (Retrospect > Window > Log). Don't post the log: it will be too long. See the section on "Verification Errors" on pages 218-219 in the Retrospect User's Guide.

Note that before using Safe Mode, if you have disabled a large number of fonts using Font Book, you should read the section "How disabled fonts are handled in Font Book 2.0 under Tiger" in my "Undoing Font Book" FAQ.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

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1. You wrote:

File “system.log”: different data size (src: 47,863, dest: 47,749), path: “Macintosh HD/private/var/log/system.log”.
6/4/2006 9:10:36 AM: 1 execution errors.

As I indicated from my earlier post and link, execution errors relating to log files — system.log in this case — when performing a hot backup (you're backing up Macintosh HD when you have also started up from it) with Verification "On" can be ignored.

2. Re: Backing up a Win XP PC to the same FireWire drive. GUID isn't really the issue, it's the file system, which is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) — aka HFS+J — if I recall your earlier post.

If you upgrade from Retrospect Express to Retrospect Desktop Edition, Desktop Edition includes clients for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. Installing the Windows client on the WIndows PC permits you to backup the Windows computer to your FireWire drive over your local network via the version of Retrospect running on your Mac, e.g.:

PC <---> Local Network <---> Mac <-> FireWire Drive

• PC running Retrospect Client for Windows.

• Mac running Retrospect Desktop.

However, there caveats when backing up Windows computers in this arrangement, specifically whether or not the PC's drive is formatted as FAT32 or NTFS:

• If the PC's drive is formatted as FAT32, then the backup to HFS+ or HFS+J is lossless.

• However, if the PC's drive is in NTFS format, the data is copied, but permissions and related NTFS metadata are not copied.

See "File System Conversions" on page 112 of the Retrospect User's Guide.

You should spend some time with the Retrospect User's Guide. So far, most of your questions have been answered therein. 😉

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X