Carbon Copy Cloner backup not recognized by MacOS

[MacBH928]

I have an hdd that is partitioned in half. 1st half is MacOS extended (journaled) backup for an older computer, and the 2nd half is partitioned for a back of a current MacOS APFS. I backup using CCC and never had a problem

It used to work fine but one day I plugged in the HDD and MacOS no longer recognized it. I went to Disk Utility and tried to erase it completely but it takes a really long time to clear the disk compared to the usual seconds to do so.

Any one has experience with this? Is this a hardware problem or a software problem? I am really not up to keep buying $60 drives forever. I only use these drives to do backup every couple of months or so.

 

[HDFan]

How old is the drive? What interface? System report doesn't show the drive?

 

[MacBH928]

How old is the drive? What interface? System report doesn't show the drive?

idk , maybe 6 years old but I only use it for backups monthly so 12 months x 6 years = 72 uses or so. I am connecting via USB-A (3 I believe) and the disk port is the mini-usb. I didn't check if it shows up in the system report. It does show up in disk utility but will not delete the partition it just stuck in preparation and deletion mode. Other drives take like seconds to complete this process.

 

[HDFan]

maybe 6 years old but I only use it for backups monthly so 12 months x 6 years = 72 uses or so.

In the past there were issues as older drives aged that lubricants began to dry out causing drive failures.

It used to work fine but one day I plugged in the HDD and MacOS no longer recognized it.

The fact that the same drive failed in on the same computer running the same OS would point to a hardware issue. You could try running a program such as DriveDX to see if that gives you any additional information.

One could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is happening but with an average disk lifetime on the order of 6 years it is probably better to replace it. Costco has a 1 TB SSD for ~$65, 5 & 8 TB drives for $99 and $149.

The recommended 3-2-1 backup strategy would have you rotating drives anyway.

 

[Boyd01]

Personally, I would never partition a backup disk - especially with two different kinds of formatting. I'm sure that it *should* work, but am just very conservative with my backups - only one per disk. As you have seen, one error has now toasted both of your backups.

As far as what's wrong or how to fix it, sorry, I don't know.

 

[MacBH928]

In the past there were issues as older drives aged that lubricants began to dry out causing drive failures.



The fact that the same drive failed in on the same computer running the same OS would point to a hardware issue. You could try running a program such as DriveDX to see if that gives you any additional information.

One could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is happening but with an average disk lifetime on the order of 6 years it is probably better to replace it. Costco has a 1 TB SSD for ~$65, 5 & 8 TB drives for $99 and $149.

The recommended 3-2-1 backup strategy would have you rotating drives anyway.

The problem is not price it just feels like a waste, I have like 6 HDDs around just for backing up my laptop, and for redundancy I have to get 2 more. Its bothersome to back to 2 drives and keeping so many drives around most of the time unused.

a real headscrachers is that there are drives out there that have been spinning for 10 years or more no issues.

Personally, I would never partition a backup disk - especially with two different kinds of formatting. I'm sure that it *should* work, but am just very conservative with my backups - only one per disk. As you have seen, one error has now toasted both of your backups.

As far as what's wrong or how to fix it, sorry, I don't know.

you make good sense but my HDDs are too small, they are only about 200GB. Feels like a waste to backup 200GB to a 500GB-1TB drive. Even worse, to have 2 backups for redundancy for each means in total 4 HDDs . 4HDDs would be about $240 , 4 backing up tasks, 4 storage space.

Cloud backup is sound a lot more appealing.

 

[ChrisA]

idk , maybe 6 years old but I only use it for backups monthly so 12 months x 6 years = 72 uses or so. I am connecting via USB-A (3 I believe) and the disk port is the mini-usb. I didn't check if it shows up in the system report. It does show up in disk utility but will not delete the partition it just stuck in preparation and deletion mode. Other drives take like seconds to complete this process.

6 years is very old for a spinning hard drive. Even if it was kept in a box and never opened. The bearing might stick. Yes, some last longer then 10 years. It is just luck.

BTW, you should be using Time Machine for backups. Not only is it better and easy to use, but if you have to replace a Mac, you can very easy restore from TM and be running in minutes. You can connect any number of TM drivs and rotate them, keeping one or more off-site.

 

[HDFan]

real headscrachers is that there are drives out there that have been spinning for 10 years or more no issues.

Yes, quite unpredictable except for drives which are known to have problems.

Feels like a waste to backup 200GB to a 500GB-1TB drive.

you should be using Time Machine for backups

Normally don't recommend TM due to its unreliability but having one in your 3-2-1 backup strategy gives you options. With the larger disk you potentially could have years of backups available.

 

[Boyd01]

Even worse, to have 2 backups for redundancy for each means in total 4 HDDs . 4HDDs would be about $240 , 4 backing up tasks, 4 storage space.

I understand. But you need to put a price on the value of your data. If you woke up tomorrow and it was all gone, how much of a problem would it be? I have been using Macs since 1985, Apple ][ since 1978 and actually have files going back almost that far. I really don't want to lose all that data, so I have spent a lot more than $240 on backups.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I have like 6 HDDs around just for backing up my laptop, and for redundancy I have to get 2 more."

Egads, there's the concept of "redundancy"... and then there is the matter of just taking things too far.

All you need are two, perhaps three backups for a given drive.
I would use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

The first backup stays near you (and the computer).
The second becomes an "off-site" backup (stored somewhere other than your house/office -- I keep mine in the car).
The third is "just one more to have around". I keep it in the basement, in a fire-resistant box.

These days I use SSDs for newer backups, but I still use at least one old platter-based HDD (it's about 13 years old now) for "the cellar backup". Still works fine.

 

[MacBH928]

6 years is very old for a spinning hard drive. Even if it was kept in a box and never opened. The bearing might stick. Yes, some last longer then 10 years. It is just luck.

BTW, you should be using Time Machine for backups. Not only is it better and easy to use, but if you have to replace a Mac, you can very easy restore from TM and be running in minutes. You can connect any number of TM drivs and rotate them, keeping one or more off-site.

- idk, I didn't realise HDD had an "expiry" date. I always imagined the more you use them the more wear and tear they get. but if you use them less, they are like new in box.

-Time Machine sucks honestly, there is a reason people pay just to use CCC. Its a messy situation dealing with a TM backup.

I understand. But you need to put a price on the value of your data. If you woke up tomorrow and it was all gone, how much of a problem would it be? I have been using Macs since 1985, Apple ][ since 1978 and actually have files going back almost that far. I really don't want to lose all that data, so I have spent a lot more than $240 on backups.

You make a good point but throwing an HDD that has been used so very sparingly feels like buying a car and driving it for a year then throwing it away to buy another car. Do you catch my drift?

Best solution I see is backing to the cloud, I still can not find a way to backup with encryption. Veracrypt will create a complete backup volume of the drive each time which I have to reupload, and I am not sure how make incremental update with Crytomator. Is that what its called, incremental?


hey those files still open in modern software? A lot of apps from back then no longer exist along their file formats. Even if the file opens it won't retain format. Heck, even a modern .docx file is not displaying correctly on modern LIbreoffice.

OP wrote:
"I have like 6 HDDs around just for backing up my laptop, and for redundancy I have to get 2 more."

Egads, there's the concept of "redundancy"... and then there is the matter of just taking things too far.

All you need are two, perhaps three backups for a given drive.
I would use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

The first backup stays near you (and the computer).
The second becomes an "off-site" backup (stored somewhere other than your house/office -- I keep mine in the car).
The third is "just one more to have around". I keep it in the basement, in a fire-resistant box.

the 6HDDs are collected over time they still work so I still keep them for backup just in case, why throw them away?

I own a copy of CCC and is my backup tool of choice. SuperDuper seems a bit amateurish. website looks like from 2003.

These days I use SSDs for newer backups, but I still use at least one old platter-based HDD (it's about 13 years old now) for "the cellar backup". Still works fine.

Now this is what I am talking about, how come you have a 13 year old stored in a cellar and mine is 6 years used sparingly and malfunctions? I am still not sure if its software issue or hardware, maybe the drive works but the data is corrupted.

Are you not worried about those SSD's memory fading? idk too much but I heard they need to be "refreshed" by being connected to electricity. I am not sure how often that should be.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Are you not worried about those SSD's memory fading? idk too much but I heard they need to be "refreshed" by being connected to electricity. I am not sure how often that should be"

The backup SSDs are "refreshed" weekly or so.

SuperDuper is not as sophisticated in abilities as CCC, but is also easier to use for a first-timer.
And it can do an incremental backup just as well as CCC.
Also, SD doesn't require registration to do a "full backup" whereas CCC does (after 30 days).

 

[dave255]

I use CCC for a local backup to an SSD along with arq for cloud backups

 

[Boyd01]

You make a good point but throwing an HDD that has been used so very sparingly feels like buying a car and driving it for a year then throwing it away to buy another car. Do you catch my drift?

Well, I might buy that analogy if cars only cost $60. But there are other relatively inexpensive items that are commonly discarded because they're cheaper to replace than fix.

FWIW, my primary mac has a 2tb internal SSD and three external 2tb SSD's, all of which are heavily used and often rather full. I have four additional 2tb external SSD's used to backup these primary disks using CCC. I have so much data... if one of the primary SSD's fails, I just want to plug in the backup and continue right where I left off. I can then buy a new backup disk to replace it. But I supplement these with continuous Time Machine backups to a network disk and BackBlaze cloud backups.

hey those files still open in modern software? A lot of apps from back then no longer exist along their file formats. Even if the file opens it won't retain format. Heck, even a modern .docx file is not displaying correctly on modern LIbreoffice.

Assuming that is in response to my comments about files going back to the 1970's? I would have to look for old floppy disks for some of that, but I have a bunch of Apple ][ files from a job I had from 1980-85. I converted most of them to text files many years ago, so they are still compatible. I actually wrote my own simple spreadsheet program in BASIC back then, because I couldn't afford Visicalc. 🤣

Back around 2012 I was building a website and wanted images of CAD work I did from ~1992-96 (?) with MacDraw. I found some program that was able to open them, although there were glitches. Exported them as .png files. Lots of old AppleWorks files from the 90's, fortunately LibreOffice opens them, exported the ones I wanted as either MS Word or Excel files. IIRC, where I got stuck was an old spreadsheet from the 1980's that (I think) was created with the first version of MultiPlan, LOL. Then there are other old documents where I just scanned hard copy print-outs that I had on file.

 

[MacBH928]

Well, I might buy that analogy if cars only cost $60. But there are other relatively inexpensive items that are commonly discarded because they're cheaper to replace than fix.

FWIW, my primary mac has a 2tb internal SSD and three external 2tb SSD's, all of which are heavily used and often rather full. I have four additional 2tb external SSD's used to backup these primary disks using CCC. I have so much data... if one of the primary SSD's fails, I just want to plug in the backup and continue right where I left off. I can then buy a new backup disk to replace it. But I supplement these with continuous Time Machine backups to a network disk and BackBlaze cloud backups.

Do you know if you can continue to use your computer while its doing backups? 4-2TB is a lot of data to back and keep the machine idle while doing so. I do not assume CCC can do them simultaneously. How are the reliability of the SSDs? how many years? any issues? what brand and model?

As for cloud backups I am seriously not comfortable with uploading without encryption. I am still in a hunt for open source encrypting and incremental backup solution. Veracrypt does full HD uploads each time and Cryptomator requires the files to be in its directory. I wonder If I can just copy and drop the files in my Macintosh HD directory in there and it would work. I understand it won't be bootable, but if I make a new install can I just drop in the directories back and everything would work as a restoration? It seems to be the lowest accessible directory on macos which is "/" in the world of linux.

I would have to look for old floppy disks for some of that, but I have a bunch of Apple ][ files from a job I had from 1980-85. I converted most of them to text files many years ago, so they are still compatible. I actually wrote my own simple spreadsheet program in BASIC back then, because I couldn't afford Visicalc. 🤣

 

[Boyd01]

Do you know if you can continue to use your computer while its doing backups? 4-2TB is a lot of data to back and keep the machine idle while doing so. I do not assume CCC can do them simultaneously. How are the reliability of the SSDs? how many years? any issues? what brand and model?

When I first started using CCC, I read all their FAQ's and they said you could use the computer while backing up. Usually I don't, however, I start a backup when I am going away for awhile.

No, I don't back them all up simultaneously, just one at a time as needed.

I have had two 500gb and one 1tb Samsung T3 USB SSD's for quite awhile, since 2016 maybe? No problems with them, I used the 1tb as a boot drive for my 2012 Mini for several years. Got two 2tb Samsung T7's in 2020 and two more around 2021. Then two 2tb WD Black USB SSD's ("game drives") and one 2tb Samsung T7 Shield that I got more recently. Never any problems with any of them.

I work with lots of geodata (for making maps), one of the T7's is a local copy of my website which has over 1tb of map data. Web maps consist of many 256x256 pixel image files (either PNG or JPG) stored in nested directories. I have lost track of how many files are there, I think there are about 60 million on that disk. Right now I am updating a big dataset of elevation data that consists of about 8 million of those map tiles. This involves processing several terabytes of source data through intermediate files to create the final map tiles. This is all done on another 2tb SSD, then transferred to the SSD with my local site and finally transferred to the internet server with SFTP. Running a backup of this disk takes several hours, due to all the files (even if I have only changed a few thousand files, CCC has to examine all 60 million during a backup).

Anyway, my point is that I hammer very hard on these disks. My 2018 Mini has been running 24/7 processing this new update for the past week, running a Windows 10 VM at the same time as I run command-line unix GIS software and native Mac programs. This is part of an ongoing project that will expand my website to a total of 2tb of content by the end of the year.

 

[HDFan]

still can not find a way to backup with encryption.

? in the U.S. all of the major backup services use encryption - Backblaze, Crashplan, Carbonite etc.

A lot of apps from back then no longer exist along their file formats.

Yes, datafiles "age" in this sense so they are no longer accessible. Try to open a Kodak Photo CD picture file ....

Do you know if you can continue to use your computer while its doing backups?

Absolutely. I have at times had maybe 4 backups running at the same time. Do have a very fast machine though.

How are the reliability of the SSDs?

This question should go into a new thread. As with most things depends.

 

[MacBH928]

? in the U.S. all of the major backup services use encryption - Backblaze, Crashplan, Carbonite etc.

I do not trust those proprietary apps. Like iCloud does encryption but Apple has the keys to decrypt it🤷‍♂️
its my own personal choice to use an open source tool

Absolutely. I have at times had maybe 4 backups running at the same time. Do have a very fast machine though.

Doesn't that disrupt the backing up process as you are changing files as you are backing them up?
I wonder how an HDD needle work as its reading to back up to 4 backups at the same time trying to write data as you use it.

 

[HDFan]

Like iCloud does encryption but Apple has the keys to decrypt it🤷‍♂️

So you setup Advanced Data Protection for iCloud where Apple doesn't have the keys:

Apple offers two options to encrypt and protect the data you store in iCloud:

• Standard data protection is the default setting for your account. Your iCloud data is encrypted, the encryption keys are secured in Apple data centers so we can help you with data recovery, and only certain data is end-to-end encrypted.
• Advanced Data Protection for iCloud is an optional setting that offers our highest level of cloud data security. If you choose to enable Advanced Data Protection, your trusted devices retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority of your iCloud data, thereby protecting it using end-to-end encryption. Additional data protected includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more.

iCloud data security overview - Apple Support

iCloud uses strong security methods, employs strict policies to protect your information, and leads the industry in using privacy-preserving security technologies like end-to-end encryption for your data.

support.apple.com

Doesn't that disrupt the backing up process as you are changing files as you are backing them up?
I wonder how an HDD needle work as its reading to back up to 4 backups at the same time trying to write data as you use it.

I am backing up a very fast internal SSD and external RAID device so there aren't any access problems. Doesn't affect normal operations, but wouldn't run any applications that involve a lot of file I/O since they would show a slowdown. The backups might be running slower than if I were just doing one, but it doesn't matter since they are running in the background.

 

[Boyd01]

Do you know if you can continue to use your computer while its doing backups?

When I first started using CCC, I read all their FAQ's and they said you could use the computer while backing up.

"Can I run a backup while I'm using my computer? If I have open files, will they be backed up?"

"Generally, yes. Performance will be affected during the backup task (especially the first one) as CCC reads the entire source volume and writes to the destination volume. If your work is "disk bound" — that is your applications are reading or writing to either the source or destination, then you'll notice a performance hit. If you're just reading email or writing a document, then you probably won't notice the performance hit."

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/can-i-r...r-if-i-have-open-files-will-they-be-backed-up