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Lancer

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
2,217
147
Australia
Just got a new 2Tb HDD with FW to backup my G5 PowerMac. I've been using CCC for years on another HDD but I'm planing to buy an iMac in the coming months so I thought I'd do a fresh backup but it's not working.

I have around 360Gb to backup and it's taking for ever, the backup window keeps stopping but it's not showing any errors. Right now it's still in the Mb and keeps stopping for several minutes.

Also when I set up the HDD I formatted it for the Mac and when into the options to make it bootable on Intel Mac's. I still have the other backup HDD in case I need to boot the G5 externally.

ETA - Ok it might be a FW problem, either the cable of the FW 400 port on the HDD. It's an IceCude case, the one that looks like a Mac Tower. It has USB2, FW400&800 and SATA ports in the back. I did get FW up but it kept stopping. I don't have a FW800 cable so can't test them ports.

Right now I've got it working on USB2 but it's going to take a long time to complete, it's took 15 min to do just 1.5Gb and I have 360Gb to do, that works out to 60 hours... and now an error message has come up. "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume" :(

ETA2 - it might be a formating issue, My original idea was to start doing backups with Time Machine on Leopard PPC then switch it over to the iMac when I get it. But the problem with that is setting up the right format. To make it bootable on the Intel iMac it needs to be set up different than a PPC. I set it up for the Intel as that's the one I'll be using it on most, but read else where TM can have an issue with this on a non Intel Mac, like my G5. So now I'm stuck It doesn't appear to be working correctly because of my set up so I can either set it for PPC now then reformat and set it for Intel later or just leave it and hope it works next time.

Also I've been having trouble ejecting the HDD even though nothing is using it, and the G5 won't restart properly, leading to a hard shut down :(

Advice/help/anything?

What no one?

Alright I got FW to work, and reformatted it for bootable PPC. I figure I can always re-format it plus I'll keep the old backup updated just in case and once I have the iMac I'll format it for Intel and use Time Machine. I might stick with CCC for the G5 and backup weekly as I've been doing for years.

Tomorrows 360Gb first backup will take some time!

Thanks for all the help and advice ;)
 
Last edited:

Lancer

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
2,217
147
Australia
UPDATE - Day 2

Okay I think the problems might be the IceCude case I bought on eBay.

Tried different cables and CCC, sometimes it would not come up when I connected the HDD to my G5, other times it would but then part way through the backup using CCC and TM it would just sit there doing nothing. Eventually I'd force quit the program or have to turn off the HDD for it stop, doing nothing.

Right now I've taken the HDD out of it's case and put it in a Docking station USB2 and setup CCC to clone the HDD. Just before I ran the same thing on my old HDD with CCC and it worked fine. Fingers crossed :)

ETA - still going, almost 12 hours so far, about 6 more to complete the full backup with CCC, later the weekly backups should be a lot quicker. But at just 20Gb per hour is that normal for USB2?

Also I'm considering getting a bigger main HDD for this G5 and use the 2nd internal for backing up, if this a good idea?
 
Last edited:

Lancer

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
2,217
147
Australia
UPDATE - Day 3

Okay the backup went fine, all 341Gb copied. It was a little smaller than I thought and averaged around 21Gb per hour over USB2. As I said in the last posts I used the same New WD Green 2Tb HDD, same cable plugged into the same port (front one on my G5) the only variable was I used a HDD dock and not the costly USED IceCube case.

So it appears the case I got is a dud, I'll have to contact the eBay seller and see what we can do to fix it.
 

Lancer

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
2,217
147
Australia
FINAL UPDATE - set the HDD case back to the seller, he ended up having the same issue with the same size WD Green and refunded me the cost.

So it was either a problem with the case or incompatibility.
 
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