backup failing

[branman]

I ran disk utility on the source and destination drives-no problems found. Also disabled anti-virus. Still no luck.

Thanks in advance.

[dnanian]

OK. Do you have any other devices attached to your FireWire bus, such as an iSight? If so, disconnect everything but the drive and see if that works.

If not, it's quite possible that this file is, indeed, damaged. Since it's a system file, it's a bit harder to repair than others, because you can't just delete it. Do you, perhaps, have another computer you can copy it from?

[branman]

Nothing else attached to computer other than power cord. I'll try copying the file from another computer. Should I copy the whole bin folder? Do you know if it is a machine-specific file?

Thanks again for all of your assistance.

[dnanian]

Don't copy the bin folder! It's critical stuff. Just take the single file listed and replace it...

[branman]

Still having difficulties. Seems that many files on the iBook are corrupted somehow. Though the system seems to run fine, I have been unsuccessful using SuperDuper to do a full backup, as well as an attempt at user files only. Additionally, I have tried using Disk Utility to do a 'restore' backup-it also failed. Finally, attempted to backup user files by simply dragging to firewire drive-still failed.

I've run a virus scan, and nothing was detected. The files that are apparently corrupted range from system files to mp3's to pdf's. Has anyone seen this sort of apparently system-wide files corruption?

I'd like to format the drive and reinstall OSX, but can't seem to backup any files before doing that. Obviously I don't want to lose everything in the process.

Thanks,
Brannon

[dnanian]

If none of the methods you're using to back up are working, but your system is running fine (including the user files you've got that indicate a problem while backing up), it's possible that you've got a FireWire problem rather than a problem on the source disk.

Can you copy the user files that are failing *locally* (that is, duplicate them with Finder)?

[branman]

No-fails when trying to burn a cd or copy within the finder. For example, attempted to copy Pictures and Music folders to the desktop. Got the following:

"The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "(filename)" could not be read or written. (Error code -36)."

When attempting to burn a cd, was given Error Code -43.

These issues seem to span many, many files on the computer.