How can I make my Time Machine backup copy-able again?

Question

Level 1

50 points

How can I make my Time Machine backup copy-able again?

Because one of my Time Machine hard drives failed catastrophically, I bought a replaceemnt disk and tried to copy the Backups from my second TM hard drive as a starting point for the new drive.

The copy failed: "A075BE7D-541F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198"cannot be converted. Please install newer version of iWork.

The 2nd error message was The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8062).

The 3rd error message was: The operation can't be completed because you don't have permisssion to access some of the items.

These last two messages were repeated a few times.

Finally, this error message appeared: The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003).

The copy then terminated.

Some additional points are:

There is only one user on this computer.
My copy of iWork is 4.3, which is the latest on the App store (certainly for Pages).
I am running OS X 10.8.4

I gave up trying to retain the Time Machine history on my new TM drive and used it as a new empty TM backup. So, at this stage I have one old 1TB backup drive with reasonable history and one brand new 3 TB backup. A week later I purchased another 3TB drive. Knowing that I couldn't copy from the old 1TB drive, I tried from the newer 3TB drive. It failed the same way. So the problem is not one of an old corrupted backup; it's new and repeatable.

Using terminal, I searched my TM backup for the file named above (using "sudo ls -aR | grep A075BE7D"). Here's my output:

big-screen:2013-06-11-002736 shenandoah$ sudo ls -aR | grep A075BE7D

Password:

A075BE7D-541F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef

./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef:

./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/Previews:

./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/index.pages:

./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/index.pages/Contents:

./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/index.pages/QuickLook:

big-screen:2013-06-11-002736 shenandoah$

Some web searching leads me to understand that these files are created under some (or all?) circumstances for Pages documents stored in iCloud. The names of the files above tell me this is part of Mountain Lion's version management system.

My question is: how can I safely get rid of the files above or in some other way make my TM backup copyable? I am also concerned that if I can't copy the backup, I may not be able to use it as a backup or as a way to migrate to a new machine.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Posted on Jun 17, 2013 2:52 PM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jun 17, 2013 3:34 PM in response to David Bean

It sounds like there's the remains of a cancelled or failed backup on the drive you're trying to copy. See #A10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to delete it.

If you find and delete it, you may be able to copy the backups. If you still have trouble, try repairing them, per #A5 in the above link. If there's a problem with them, you cannot copy them (and you don't really want to, anyway). If that finds and fixes anything, try the copy again.

If still no help, your best bet is to put that drive "on the shelf" for a while, and let TM start fresh on the new drive. You can always see or restore from the old ones via the Browse Other Backup Disks option, per #E2 in, well, you know. Once you know you don't need them anymore, erase the drive (perhaps with a zero-out) and use it for something else.

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Answer 2

David Bean Author

Level 1

50 points

Jun 18, 2013 11:06 AM in response to Pondini

Pondini: Thanks very much for the reply.

A corrupted TM volume was what I originally thought, but I no longer believe that is the cause. The exact chronology is hard to see in my orginal post, but the important fact is that I have encountered the same errors when trying to copy from two different backup volumes. Let me name the volumes:

A was the original 1TB volume with many years of TM versions

B was my first 3TB drive also with many years of backup data. This one died with a HW malfunction.

C was another 3TB drive I purchased.

D is a warranty replacement for B.

After B died and I purchased C, I tried to copy the backups from A on to C. It failed with the errors I described. So I erased volume C and connected it as a start-from-scratch TM volume.

When D arrived in the mail, I tried again to copy from A and it failed the same way (no surprise). I then tried to copy from C and it also failed the same way.

So copying from a one-week-old TM volume was failing with the same symptoms as the failure to copy from the years-old version. This strongly suggests to me that I have some filestore data on my live system which when backed up on to a TM volume renders that Backups.backupd uncopyable by Finder. Strange!

I now realize that the folder in which the problem file(s) are stored on the backup, .DocumentRevisions-V100, is the folder in which OS X stores its versioning data for all users. I am now trying to work out whether I can safely delete these files from the backup and from the live system filestore so they don't get copied out to a backup again.

I haven't got there yet!

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jun 18, 2013 11:16 AM in response to David Bean

David Bean wrote:

. . .

So copying from a one-week-old TM volume was failing

Have you run Repair Disk on it?

I now realize that the folder in which the problem file(s) are stored on the backup,.DocumentRevisions-V100, is the folder in which OS X stores its versioning data for all users. I am now trying to work out whether I can safely delete these files from the backup

That does get damaged on occasion. I haven't seen it in quite a while, so it's pretty rare.

You can delete it from the backups, via the TM interface, but you must be able to show invisible items).

First, open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be very careful with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.

In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: <Computer Name>:~ <your name>$

(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor.

Copy, do not type, the following after the prompt:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1

and press Return.

You should just see the prompt again.

Then see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12 to delete all the backups of it.

and from the live system filestore so they don't get copied out to a backup again.

Yes. You will, of course, lose all previous versions, but since the file is corrupted, you may have lost some, most, or all of them already.

When done, run the same command to hide the invisible items, but replace the "1" with a zero.

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Answer 4

Stef_242

Level 1

4 points

Jun 5, 2014 2:10 AM in response to David Bean

Thought to help close out this old thread.

I had the same issue as David and found this post by Linc Davis http://discussions.apple.com/thread/5071733?answerId=22137734022#22137734022 solved the problem.

In summary, don't try copying the backup using the drag-and-drop method, or even copy and 'paste exactly' but instead use the Restore function on Disk Utility. By 'restoring' to a new drive / partition, Disk Utility makes an identical copy and in my case it was much swifter than the rate at which the drag-and-drop method was going (until it spewed out all those errors).

As Linc points out in his original post, it's explained in the Disk Utility help file if you search for the word 'duplicate'.

It was driving me nuts but the Disk Utility trick worked out.

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Answer 5

silviat

Level 1

10 points

Feb 28, 2016 7:12 PM in response to Stef_242

I Did this but the resulting copy was also corrupted

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