Problems w. permissions, lack of HD space, etc. while backing up computer
I'm trying to help my father (long distance) with problems with his Sawtooth G4 (with about 1 GB RAM, a relatively small startup HD (8 GB or so) but a 120 GB second internal HD and a firewire external HD). The internal HD has been nearly full for a while. He has done various things to remove items from it, sometimes moving things best not moved (e.g. iPhoto library) to the other internal HD resulting in substantial disorganization (e.g. multiple iPhoto libraries).
I'm trying to back up both internal disks onto the external HD so we can get the 120 GB disk changed over to be the startup drive (he'll have to bring it in, so I want a good backup first). First I want to repair both disks and repair permissions.
Unfortunately the startup disk was running remarkably slowly. I freed up some space - up to 750 MB - but it was still too slow to get any work done. Using the Installer disk (10.4.3) I started trying to check the internal disk. I started finding massive numbers of permission problems on the startup disk. Then I remembered that it wasn't a good idea to check permissions with an older version of the system and wondered if that was why, so I cancelled the repair - was that even worse?
After that I installed 10.4.6 on the external HD. For some reason after that Timbuktu didn' t work any more (although iChat works fine); that made everything a lot more difficult!
From there I could repair the startup disk, and it found no problems; likewise the other internal drive. However, it wouldn't let me repair permissions on the startup disk which was rather disturbing. Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) wouldn't even recognize the startup drive.
Then we restarted from the Installer disk again. It recognized the startup disk just fine and was happy to repair permissions, but being 10.4.3 I decided not to do it.
At this point I'm stuck - I don't understand why we got that odd pattern of OS 10.4.6 on the startup disk not being recognized by the 10.4.6 Disk Utility on the external HD but being recognized just fine by the Installer DVD. And I don't know why the startup drive wasn't recognized at all by CCC.
Any ideas of what's wrong or how to proceed would be very much appreciated!
Thanks,
Peter
PowerMac Dual G5, 2.3 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)
I'm trying to back up both internal disks onto the external HD so we can get the 120 GB disk changed over to be the startup drive (he'll have to bring it in, so I want a good backup first). First I want to repair both disks and repair permissions.
Unfortunately the startup disk was running remarkably slowly. I freed up some space - up to 750 MB - but it was still too slow to get any work done. Using the Installer disk (10.4.3) I started trying to check the internal disk. I started finding massive numbers of permission problems on the startup disk. Then I remembered that it wasn't a good idea to check permissions with an older version of the system and wondered if that was why, so I cancelled the repair - was that even worse?
After that I installed 10.4.6 on the external HD. For some reason after that Timbuktu didn' t work any more (although iChat works fine); that made everything a lot more difficult!
From there I could repair the startup disk, and it found no problems; likewise the other internal drive. However, it wouldn't let me repair permissions on the startup disk which was rather disturbing. Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) wouldn't even recognize the startup drive.
Then we restarted from the Installer disk again. It recognized the startup disk just fine and was happy to repair permissions, but being 10.4.3 I decided not to do it.
At this point I'm stuck - I don't understand why we got that odd pattern of OS 10.4.6 on the startup disk not being recognized by the 10.4.6 Disk Utility on the external HD but being recognized just fine by the Installer DVD. And I don't know why the startup drive wasn't recognized at all by CCC.
Any ideas of what's wrong or how to proceed would be very much appreciated!
Thanks,
Peter
PowerMac Dual G5, 2.3 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)
PowerMac Dual G5, 2.3 GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.5)
