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Posted By: kevs Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/05/16 12:45 AM
I got Sophos because my web hoster recommeded I get an antiviris. I've been using Sophos (who they recommended), and it was going ok, but now is conflicting with scheduled copies of Super Duper, which I've been using for years. SD says Sophos puts an error message on the offending email, and hence SD wont finish the copy.

I've contacted Sophos and there is nothing they can do.

So I have to now manually delete the bad email to get copies to work. Real tedious.

SD (and others) have said bail on silly antivirus. I would like to! The only reason I got on board again is because of this incident from 2 years ago or so. Any advice? Thanks.









From a couple of years ago:

Our systems have alerted us that on 12/25/2013 malicious IP addresses in Russia & - an IP address in Belarus) logged into the FTP account and uploaded malicious files.


We've removed the files from the account. The FTP password for the account has been changed to:

As a precuation, your wordpress passwords have been disabled. You can reset your wordpress passworsd by going to and clicking on 'Lost your password?'


This means that either the FTP password was easy to guess and was brute forced, or a computer that had the FTP password stored, or used the FTP account in the past, was hacked and infected with malware/trojan/viruses/keyloggers. There are a lot of known viruses and trojans in the wild that are specifically designed to steal FTP passwords stored in FTP accounts, even if they haven't been used in years.


Please scan all home, office, laptop and other computers that may have accessed that FTP account in the past or had the FTP password stored on them.
Posted By: Virtual1 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 12:16 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
I got Sophos because my web hoster recommeded I get an antiviris.

... and my doctor recommended more bloodwork
... and my dealership recommended a tuneup
... and the McOrderBoy recommended I supersize my meal
... and best buy recommended the extended warranty

though not strictly an upsell in this case, you have to consider the source of "helpful suggestions". In the case of AV, it almost exclusively comes from someone with little to no mac experience. While the landscape is constantly changing, historically AV software has been more likely to cause problems than to prevent them. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to remove AV software to fix a mac.
Posted By: MacManiac Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 01:06 PM
I second what he is saying.....having Macintosh computers since their initial release in 1984, I've never had a single malware successfully establish itself on any of my platforms.

I too have seen many issues CREATED by anti-malware software "recommended/REQUIRED" to be installed by corporate IT departments as a result of blanket policies driven by their Windows installed user-base.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 06:22 PM
Virtual, boy I agree with you on the dealership. My dealer is always recommending things I don't need, but my isp -- they are specialized for photographers and very sharp guys. And they don't get anything from me being with Sophos. That's why I dug out the email to show you what happened. They say a there was a trojan that would have been prevented by an AV, no?

Where did the Trojan come from? Did I incidentally open something? Did an intern in my office put it in? I have no idea.

But was a lot of havoc...

I agree maybe it will never happen again, but you see the letter. I happened and would not have happened probably if an AV was there at that time, right? And it "could" happen again... maybe... right?
Posted By: tacit Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 07:51 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Virtual, boy I agree with you on the dealership. My dealer is always recommending things I don't need, but my isp -- they are specialized for photographers and very sharp guys. And they don't get anything from me being with Sophos. That's why I dug out the email to show you what happened. They say a there was a trojan that would have been prevented by an AV, no?

Where did the Trojan come from? Did I incidentally open something? Did an intern in my office put it in? I have no idea.

But was a lot of havoc...

I agree maybe it will never happen again, but you see the letter. I happened and would not have happened probably if an AV was there at that time, right? And it "could" happen again... maybe... right?


If you were running Windows, then a password-stealing Trojan is a possibility. But I'm not aware of any such Trojans targeting FTP passwords on OS X.

More likely, they just brute-forced your passwords. I have about twenty different Web sites, and I deploy some pretty formidable defenses (including adaptive firewalls and rate limiters), and I get, on average, anywhere between a couple of dozen and a few hundred attempts per day to hack my passwords. These attacks don't know or care who I am or what the Web sites are; they're totally automated.

If your FTP password is a dictionary word or a string of numbers attached to a dictionary word, it's gonna get breached, sooner or later. It's just a question of time. That's why my FTP passwords are long strings of random gibberish, like

,,<hB5%?nmK-~db7&s'llu;-=

(Not an actual password, of course, but that's what my passwords look like.)
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 07:53 PM
Your site host may be very sharp and knowledgable about photography, web hosting, and server based software such as wordpress, but that does not necessarily translate into knowledge of OS X.

Quote:
This means that either the FTP password was easy to guess and was brute forced,

Choosing a weak password, or breaking a password with a brute force attack has absolutely nothing nothing to do with your computer or anything on your computer. However Keychain Access and several third party applications will suggest strong passwords for your use.

Quote:
… or a computer that had the FTP password stored, or used the FTP account in the past, was hacked and infected with malware/trojan/viruses/keyloggers.

Given there has never been such a malware/virus/trojan/keylogger identified on a Mac the potentially infected computer would almost certainly have to have been a PC therefore an antivirus solution on your Mac would not have any benefit. The one known trojan for the Mac was a DNS redirector not a keyword thief and it was obviated by an OS X patch that both removed the virus and the vulnerability shortly after its discovery.

Quote:
There are a lot of known viruses and trojans in the wild that are specifically designed to steal FTP passwords stored in FTP accounts, even if they haven't been used in years.

Antivirus software can only detect known viruses from their signature or bit pattern and the only known signatures are for Windows PCs which cannot infect a Mac. Sophos and others do a good job of detecting Windows viruses contained in email or downloaded files on your Mac and can help prevent you from unwittingly passing those viruses along to your PC using friends but little to protect your Mac.

Trojans, true to the implication of their name, require your complicity and trick you into installing them on your Mac and are extremely difficult to differentiate from legitimate software installations. Your best protection is to avoid downloading software from sketchy websites or software aggregators who use their own installer which may include unwanted malware or adware in the package.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 08:27 PM
Thanks Tacit/ Joe.
What mean windows computer infected, it was my Mac that hot hit no?

And this Trojan could have come from an intern? Maybe an email attachment I accidentally opened? Maybe a software someone recommended? I have no idea... Wouldn't AV have prevented this?

Currently I get zillions of spam with attachments and Sophos is marking some with and error, (thats how Dave at SD explained it), and making some of my super duper clones abort. This is why I posted. What do you guys recommend?
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/06/16 11:55 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Tacit/ Joe.
What mean windows computer infected, it was my Mac that hot hit no?

It was the site server that got hit either from a bot running on some unwary user's PC somewhere in the world or possibly being knowingly run from someone's computer somewhere in the world such as Russia or China. The odds of your Mac being hit are vanishingly small.

Originally Posted By: keys
And this Trojan could have come from an intern?


Not sure what you mean by an intern but by definition trojans have to be intentionally installed by a user of the computer. That means you would have had to download the Trojan's installer and then run the installer. Unless you have a null password you would have needed type in the administrative password to install it and assuming the right settings in Security & Privacy override OS X's reluctance to allow the install by entering your password multiple times. No AV software can protect a user from their own choices. However, as far as I know no such trojan exists or has ever existed for OS X.

Originally Posted By: kevs
Maybe an email attachment I accidentally opened? Maybe a software someone recommended? I have no idea... Wouldn't AV have prevented this?


I say again, "Antivirus software works by detecting the signature of KNOWN viruses. There are no KNOWN viruses for the Mac. Therefore an AV cannot detect Mac viruses — but it can detect Windows viruses because there are tens of thousands of known Windows viruses and variants. Windows viruses cannot infect OS X. Therefore AV software would be capable of nothing other than slowing your Mac down and causing a number of annoying problems.

Originally Posted By: keys
Currently I get zillions of spam with attachments and Sophos is marking some with and error, (thats how Dave at SD explained it), and making some of my super duper clones abort. This is why I posted. What do you guys recommend?

Those messages may be virus infected or they may be false positives. In either case they would be Windows viruses not OS X viruses. I run barefoot so I don't know how Sophos works but typically you can set AV software to move the suspected file to a Quarantine folder. Once it is there you have several options…
  1. Exempt the Quarantine folder from SD backups so you should then be able to complete an SD backup.
  2. Simply delete the suspected file. If it is something you need, contact the originator and ask them to send you a clean copy of the file.
  3. Most AV softrware will identify the specific virus it has detected. Go to the AV vendors web site and look up the virus and determine if it is a Windows virus or an OS X virus. Then you can make an informed decision on where to go from there (If it is a Windows virus the primary risk is in passing the infected file to a PC user thus earning their animosity, but your Mac is safe
  4. If the file is sufficiently important and you cannot get a clean copy you may be able to get software from Sophos to disinfect the file that will run on a Mac. Of course that involves more money.
Asking what I/we do is a legitimate question. As I mentioned, I run barefoot — that is without AV software. Occasionally I scan for adware and other not-quite-malware using MalwareBytes anti-Malware. I use a reasonably strong password can actually remember, keep System Preferences ➯ Security & Privacy ➯ Allow apps downloaded from: set to [i]Mac App Store and identified developers[i], avoid sketchy web sites and software aggregators, keep OS X, Java, and Flash rigorously up to date. Keep my ear to the ground for warnings of actual Apple (OS X and iOS) viruses in case one appears and I have to bite the bullet and get antivirus software.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 01:39 AM
Thanks Joe, when my isp says: Our systems have alerted us that on 12/25/2013 malicious IP addresses in Russia & - an IP address in Belarus) logged into the FTP account and uploaded malicious files.We've removed the files from the account. The FTP password for the account has been changed to"

They are talking about my computer account right? Not some server I have nothing to do with. They are placing the blame on my shoulders...

But... you are saying they don't know what they are talking about? (and while they are smart, maybe you are smarter..).

They definitely blamed this on me, my weak password or what not, and demanded I got Sophos so as they don't have to save my ass in the future.

Their analysis was wrong? It's hard to get my head around it.

Ironically Sophos was driving me crazy for a year, asking every day or so if I wanted to clean up a threat (always a trojan attachment coming in from spam) I would go to Quarantine manager and clean up the threat). And enormous amounts of work and help from one of their top techs. I was able to have them clean up these threats without bothering me or me going to Qaurentine manager. Then this stuff started happening with the conflict with Super Duper. So maybe that's related?

Someone suggested elsewhere I try Avast or one other AV to see if it does not conflict with SD. But you advice would probably be to go barefoot, which is what I had breen doing for 10 years until I got that email from the isp, after I could not get into my blog. I'm open to bailing totally, but I probably would not tell the isp for awhile.
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 03:43 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Joe, when my isp says: Our systems have alerted us that on 12/25/2013 malicious IP addresses in Russia & - an IP address in Belarus) logged into the FTP account and uploaded malicious files.We've removed the files from the account. The FTP password for the account has been changed to"

They are talking about my computer account right? Not some server I have nothing to do with.

You are misconstruing the message from your ISP. They are talking about logging onto your account ON THEIR SERVER not your user account on your Mac.
Originally Posted By: keys
They are placing the blame on my shoulders…

They are not placing blame on your shoulders. They are placing blame on the owners of the computers in Belarus.
Originally Posted By: keys
But… you are saying they don't know what they are talking about? (and while they are smart, maybe you are smarter..).

They definitely blamed this on me, my weak password or what not, and demanded I got Sophos so as they don't have to save my ass in the future.

Their analysis was wrong? It's hard to get my head around it.

This thread has gotten tangled and there have been misinterpretations and misunderstandings. In the first place assigning blame is a pointless exercise that accomplishes nothing. Are your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and web site host one in the same or separate entities? From your comments I find it has been difficult to keep straight what is coming from your ISP, your web host, and Shirtpocket software (the vendor of Super Duper.) This post has been helpful in sorting all that out.

What I am sure of is whoever is demanding you get Sophos does hot have a full grasp or understanding of the current state of the Macintosh vis-a-vis security and viruses.
Originally Posted By: keys
Ironically Sophos was driving me crazy for a year, asking every day or so if I wanted to clean up a threat (always a trojan attachment coming in from spam) I would go to Quarantine manager and clean up the threat). And enormous amounts of work and help from one of their top techs. I was able to have them clean up these threats without bothering me or me going to Quarantine manager.

Did you ever sort out what kinds of malware were showing up in Quarantine manager? Ie. were they windows viruses or some other kind of virus? If they are Windows viruses and you are not posting the files on your blog or otherwise risking infecting Windows computers then why do you care about them? Windows viruses cannot infect your Mac.
Originally Posted By: keys
Then this stuff started happening with the conflict with Super Duper. So maybe that's related?

I started with Carbon Copy Cloner but switched to Super Duper when it came out. I forget whether it was Yosemite or El Capitan that I had problems with SD and switched back to CCC. All I can say is CCC is working perfectly for me now.
Originally Posted By: keys
Someone suggested elsewhere I try Avast or one other AV to see if it does not conflict with SD. But you advice would probably be to go barefoot, which is what I had been doing for 10 years until I got that email from the sip, after I could not get into my blog.

IMHO as far as AV software goes it is pretty much six of one and half a dozen of the other. But that is must my opinion.
Originally Posted By: keys
I'm open to bailing totally, but I probably would not tell the sip for awhile.

Again IMHO the software you run on your computer is none of your ISPs business.

I suspect that at least in part, the ISPs demand is a result of a misunderstanding of the original message to mean your personal computer had been hacked or infected, and subsequent miscommunication between yourself and the ISP's tech support coupled with a Windows-centric viewpoint on their end.

Rather than assuming you are being blamed as the malefactor in this scenario, there are questions you need to ask yourself why you are receiving so much virus infected traffic? Maybe you need to take another look at where you goon the internet with a more cautious/skeptical viewpoint? Maybe you need to unsubscribe from sources that consistently turn up with infected files? Perhaps rather than going to the hassle of disinfecting infected files in the quarantine folder all you need to do is delete them?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 04:46 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
I started with Carbon Copy Cloner but switched to Super Duper when it came out. I forget whether it was Yosemite or El Capitan that I had problems with SD and switched back to CCC. All I can say is CCC is working perfectly for me now.
For me, it was El Capitan. I, too, made the switch to CCC and it's also working fine for me.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 08:47 PM
Thanks Joe:
To clarify my isp is ATT, they are not involved.
Who I meant is my web hoster: the one who host my wordpress blog. Something bad happened with the blog, I think I could not log in. And they sent me that email. The implication was I was at fault. They solved the situation, created a nice new long password, and then insisted I get the AV.

But they were wrong? My computer having an AV would not have prevented what happened?

As far as Sophos goes: it's just collecting spam bad attachments/ trojans and putting them in Quarantine and asking if I want to clean the threat. Total nuisance, as without Sophos, I would just delete the spam emails and that would be the end of it. I guess the main function the AV performs is preventing me from accidentally double clicking a bad attachment? And that could happen...

But the key is this, you and others don't think having an AV would have prevented the original occurrence with the Wordpress blog and the password issue and the trojan that caused that? And if that is the case, then I will probably lean to bailing on having any AV is they are a PITA.

They gave me the impression that this was a local thing that someone who sat at my computer in my house inserted the Trojan on my computer or who knows what...

The new nuisance, and reason for the post was the new situation of Sophos making super duper clones abort.

BTW someone else mentioned CCC, I looked at them years ago but found SD much nicer and they have great customer service. What issue did you have with SD? You find CCC works just as well, interface wise, and does CCC have good support? Someone mentioned SD does not clone the OS recovery utility? Hear that?

Jon, just saw your post now about CCC, same question to you about that vs SD, and if you want to comment on AV please do. This is helping guys!

Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 09:11 PM
CCC can clone the OS X recovery partition; SuperDuper! can't. (Perhaps it's why SD dropped their price?)

I've used CCC for about 6 years, and in my experience, their customer support is outstanding.

I've never used AV and never missed it.

As far as I can make out from what you've posted, the only way you, personally, could have been at fault for that blog incident was by using an easily guessed password.
Posted By: tacit Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 10:16 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Joe:
To clarify my isp is ATT, they are not involved.
Who I meant is my web hoster: the one who host my wordpress blog. Something bad happened with the blog, I think I could not log in. And they sent me that email. The implication was I was at fault. They solved the situation, created a nice new long password, and then insisted I get the AV.

But they were wrong? My computer having an AV would not have prevented what happened?


Correct.

You set up a WordPress blog. Someone got into it. There are three ways that people hack into WordPress blogs:

1. When you created the WordPress blog you did not choose a good password. They figured out the password.

2. You did not do security updates on the Wordpress blog.

3. Your Windows PC got infected with a Trojan.

You do not have a Windows PC, so that means (3) is not what happened. That leaves either 1 or 2.

They said the hackers used FTP to get in. That rules out (2). That leaves only one possibility: you did not choose a good password, so the hackers figured it out.

Note that this is not the password on your computer; it's the password you set up WordPress with.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 11:29 PM
Thanks Artie/ Tacit.

Boy, I'm glad I saved, and could find that email they sent me, otherwise you could never have seen in such specificity why they insisted I get Sophos. So as Joe said, they may be smart guys but not conversant with Mac or everything? And they really are pretty smart, they run the servers for a long time and even by that email write intelligently, so I trust them, even though, I was happy being AV free for years....

So I had a weak password...

I never had a Trojan as they implied in the email? Again, I keep thinking they are saying a Trojan was on my local computer and that created the window to hack the password... (I've never had a thorough discussion about it with them, they don't seem to want to waste time on past issues)

I assume Tacit you don't bother with AV either...

So the only reason to have an AV is if I"m so lame as to accidentally double click an email attachment or someone comes into my house and installs something sinister...? But in short, no one it seems who is very Mac savvy recommends bothering with AV. My web hoster would probably would still insist Sophos would have prevented it...even if I explained all this, my guess.

Now if I did keep Sophos, which I leaning to not do, I'm leaning to bail on AV altogether, is SD correct in that Sophos is labeling spam attachments as errors, and hence SD wont do the clone? And if so is there anything I could do? Or I would have to try a different AV.. Avast... etc Neither SD or Sophos had a solution to that.

BTW for wordpress, I don't remember doing security updates. I have some type of AV there I think-- some spam plugin, and I update that, and I update Wordpress, or I think it updates itself now..

CCC- SD, So if I stay with SD, and my MacHD goes haywire, and I clone back with my SD clone, the recovery partition is not there? Why not-- SD seems to be pretty robust, how could they miss what the competitor could do? Will they fix that later? And isn't that a Mac thing embedded into the OS? And couldn't one add it on later anyway or you would never ever have that again?
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 11:49 PM
Quote:
So the only reason to have an AV is if I"m so lame as to accidentally double click an email attachment or someone comes into my house and installs something sinister...?

At least one more reason: if there's malware in an email sent to you and you forward that email to a Windows user you could infect the other person's computer.

Quote:
CCC- SD, So if I stay with SD, and my MacHD goes haywire, and I clone back with my SD clone, the recovery partition is not there? Why not-- SD seems to be pretty robust, how could they miss what the competitor could do? Will they fix that later? And isn't that a Mac thing embedded into the OS? And couldn't one add it on later anyway or you would never ever have that again?

I've got no idea what coding factors allow CCC to clone the recovery partition but prevent SD from doing so, but it's been a bunch of years since the partition was introduced, and if SD can't clone it yet it doesn't look good for the future. (Note that pre-recovery partition SD was $40 shareware and CCC was donationware, and post-recovery partition SD has lowered their price to $28 while CCC has gone to $40 shareware, which I suspect is a clue.)

The recovery partition is part of an OS X install, and the only way you can get it back in a pinch is by reinstalling which is presumably less preferable than restoring from a clone.
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/07/16 11:55 PM
As to the blog password antivirus issue, Tacit said it all.

As to the CCC vs SD question I depend on Time Machine as my primary backup and it has proven very reliable and very flexible but Time Machine Versus clones is another thread. However I do make occasional clones of my boot drive and just so I have a nice warm fuzzy feeling in case of a near total disaster, my recovery drive as well. I had switched to SD in the past primarily because it had a "cleaner" UI and not for any performance reasons. The reasons I have gone back to CCC are — in no particular order...
  • Yosemite broke SD's ability to automatically download and install updates. Certainly not a deal breaker, but an annoyance.
  • As Artie said, CCC can copy the Recovery Partition and SD could not. That may have changed recently, but CCC has worked well enought there has been no reason to see if it has. (Copying the Recovery Partition is a deal maker for me).
  • At the time I had a problem with a failed SD clone and CCC successfully cloned the same drive
  • As both Artie and Jon indicated CCC works well and it always has.
  • The current CCC user interface is in my opinion "cleaner" than it used to be which removes my original objection to it.

By-the-way TechTool Pro 8's Pro-To-Go mode can create a bootable Recovery drive on an internal or external HD/SSD/Thumb drive but it adds one additional feature to its Recovery drive, a working copy of TechTool Pro 8 including Pro-To-Go.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 03:53 AM
Thanks guys. I have not used Tech Tool Pro for years, but I remember that nice feature of them having the hidden e drive or something. I really love the new Mac feature command R, hidden recovery, it's so fast easy to test your Mac HD.

Are Time Machines backups of bootable backups of the OS? Reading online people say it's not.. but I remember it being offered recently from Migration tool (which I did not choose), which would make it seem then it's a bootable copy.

Anyway, trying to get my head around the SD not backing up the recovery drive.

So if my Mac HD fried, and I cloned back from a SD clone, the recovery drive is not there, fine. But could I then add the recovery drive to the OS, manually and stay with what I have or do I have wipe Mac HD clean to get it as a feature? i.e. putting back in all my apps manually one at a time..?? That is the confusing part.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 03:07 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs


Anyway, trying to get my head around the SD not backing up the recovery drive.

So if my Mac HD fried, and I cloned back from a SD clone, the recovery drive is not there, fine. But could I then add the recovery drive to the OS, manually and stay with what I have or do I have wipe Mac HD clean to get it as a feature? i.e. putting back in all my apps manually one at a time..?? That is the confusing part.


I use SD for my weekly backups of both of my Macs, and there have been a couple of times when I have needed to do a "full" recovery from an SD clone. That is, I boot my problematic Mac to the clone, use Disk Utility (on the clone) to Erase and Format the internal SSD, and then use SD to do the restore. Given that I have both TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior, it is of little concern to me that SD cannot backup the Recovery HD partition. But, there are at least two ways of re-creating it:

1. Assuming one has the file "Install OS X "whatever OS"" (I have the file "Install OS X El Capitan" in a couple of places), one can use the excellent (and free!) utility called "Recovery Partition Creator" (http://www.macworld.com/article/2602951/...-any-drive.html). One can get it from here:

http://musings.silvertooth.us/2014/07/recovery-partition-creator-3-8/

It does work flawlessly with El Capitan.

2. After Erasing and Formatting one's internal drive, perform a fresh, "virgin" installation of the OS one uses. This will create the Recovery HD partition. Then, use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy stuff from the SD backup. I have also restored in that fashion too, and again it works perfectly.
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 04:40 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Are Time Machines backups of bootable backups of the OS? Reading online people say it's not.. but I remember it being offered recently from Migration tool (which I did not choose), which would make it seem then it's a bootable copy.

Time Machine backups ARE NOT BOOTABLE however you can boot from a Recovery drive and then restore from a Time Machine backup. It is too long a story to go into the reasons, but I did exactly that at least three times in the last week and it always worked perfectly.
Originally Posted By: keys
So if my Mac HD fried, and I cloned back from a SD clone, the recovery drive is not there, fine. But could I then add the recovery drive to the OS, manually and stay with what I have or do I have wipe Mac HD clean to get it as a feature? i.e. putting back in all my apps manually one at a time..?? That is the confusing part.

First the recovery Drive is not part of the OS but it is installed by the OS X installer in a separate invisible volume on your boot drive. If the volume structure on the boot volume got damaged you could still boot from the Recover drive and run Disk Utility, OS X install, or Recover from a Time Machine backup. If your HD mechanism fried it would take the Recovery Drive with it. You would have to install a replacement HD, boot an internet version of Recovery Drive (handily provided by Apple) or a Recovery drive on a different drive and install the latest version of OS X which would create a new recovery drive on your new HD in the process. Then you could run migration assistant to recover your files, settings, applications, etc from either a clone or a Time Machine Backup.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 06:04 PM
Thanks Honestone/ Joe, great info.

Interesting. I never thought of using TM before as an OS backup, but if my Mac HD went sour, but was still working, you would then erase it, from the recovery drive, and then use migration assistant and bring in the last copy of the Mac HD from TM, correct flow chart?

And if the HD needed to be replaced, ( I just hired someone to put a new SSD in my laptop 2 weeks ago).. they put in a new OS, and then I did a migration from the old hardrive, but if the hardrive was fried, I would migrate from TM as well. If TM was fried for some reason or did not have recent Mac HD backups for a long time for some reason, then I would migrate from the SD clone, treating it as the "new computer", and then be able to get the recovery partition later installed by the 3rd party links listed above?

This is nice, in the past I just used TM in a limited way as I only had a 700 GB external, and exuded so much including the OS. But in this latest overhaul, I bought a new 8TB drive to replace that which has everything covered, so for first time I'll think of TM , and not SD as the emergency go to replacement for the fried Mac HD, right? not the SD external.

I'm open to CCC, but have been with SD for a long time and am ok with it.

How do you all even know that SD did not do the recovery partition? I guess I don't read the forums here enough, just out of the loop, is some newsletter you all get to let you know about these arcane things?

But this is a nice mind shifter about TM.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 07:03 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: kevs
Are Time Machines backups of bootable backups of the OS? Reading online people say it's not.. but I remember it being offered recently from Migration tool (which I did not choose), which would make it seem then it's a bootable copy.

Time Machine backups ARE NOT BOOTABLE however you can boot from a Recovery drive and then restore from a Time Machine backup. It is too long a story to go into the reasons, but I did exactly that at least three times in the last week and it always worked perfectly.


CORRECT! And, that is one of the disadvantages of Time Machine backups. With SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner, one just needs to re-boot their Mac from either of those clones, and then do either a direct restore (each of those programs will first Erase (and Format?) the internal device, and then do the restore, or as I mentioned earlier, run Disk Utility from the clone to Erase and Format the internal drive, do a fresh, "virgin" installation of the OS (and making sure to get to the last used version on one's machine), boot the Mac from that freshly installed OS, and finally use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy stuff from the clone.

]
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: kevs
So if my Mac HD fried, and I cloned back from a SD clone, the recovery drive is not there, fine. But could I then add the recovery drive to the OS, manually and stay with what I have or do I have wipe Mac HD clean to get it as a feature? i.e. putting back in all my apps manually one at a time..?? That is the confusing part.

First the recovery Drive is not part of the OS but it is installed by the OS X installer in a separate invisible volume on your boot drive. If the volume structure on the boot volume got damaged you could still boot from the Recover drive and run Disk Utility, OS X install, or Recover from a Time Machine backup. If your HD mechanism fried it would take the Recovery Drive with it. You would have to install a replacement HD, boot an internet version of Recovery Drive (handily provided by Apple) or a Recovery drive on a different drive and install the latest version of OS X which would create a new recovery drive on your new HD in the process. Then you could run migration assistant to recover your files, settings, applications, etc from either a clone or a Time Machine Backup.


Let me state again. There are two ways of getting the Recovery HD partition back:

1. Erase and Format the internal drive, and then do a fresh, "virgin" installation of the OS. The Recovery HD partition will get created as part of that installation.

2. With the restore from SuperDuper! already complete, and assuming you have the "Install OS X "whatever OS"" file someplace, use the utility I mentioned above, Recovery Partition Creator, to re-create the Recovery HD partition.

For #1, it will be necessary to use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the necessary stuff from the backup/clone. For #2, that stuff is already there via the Restore.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 07:11 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Honestone/ Joe, great info.

Interesting. I never thought of using TM before as an OS backup, but if my Mac HD went sour, but was still working, you would then erase it, from the recovery drive, and then use migration assistant and bring in the last copy of the Mac HD from TM, correct flow chart?

And if the HD needed to be replaced, ( I just hired someone to put a new SSD in my laptop 2 weeks ago).. they put in a new OS, and then I did a migration from the old hardrive, but if the hardrive was fried, I would migrate from TM as well. If TM was fried for some reason or did not have recent Mac HD backups for a long time for some reason, then I would migrate from the SD clone, treating it as the "new computer", and then be able to get the recovery partition later installed by the 3rd party links listed above?

This is nice, in the past I just used TM in a limited way as I only had a 700 GB external, and exuded so much including the OS. But in this latest overhaul, I bought a new 8TB drive to replace that which has everything covered, so for first time I'll think of TM , and not SD as the emergency go to replacement for the fried Mac HD, right? not the SD external.

I'm open to CCC, but have been with SD for a long time and am ok with it.

How do you all even know that SD did not do the recovery partition? I guess I don't read the forums here enough, just out of the loop, is some newsletter you all get to let you know about these arcane things?

But this is a nice mind shifter about TM.


First, I had previously read about SD not backing up/cloning the Recovery HD partition, but that Carbon Copy Cloner did. Also, when I have needed to do a restore from the SD clone, I could see that the Recovery HD partition was not there.

Secondly, if one really needs the Recovery HD partition, and have it restored "automatically", then Carbon Copy Cloner is the way to go. On the other had, I myself would not need to rely on the Recovery HD partition, as 1) I have the superior disk cleanup/maintenance/repair products Tech Tool Pro and Disk Warrior, 2) I have the "Install OS X El Capitan" in at least two places on my system (and thus on my backup/clone), and 3) I can easily re-create the Recovery HD partition using the utility Recovery Partition Creator.

Third, I insure that my system (on both machines) is "lean and clean", and thus tend to rarely have issues. Of course, no matter how much care one takes for any drive (internal or external, SSD or HDD), they will eventually go bad. But, one can get prepared for that.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 07:58 PM
Thanks Honestone, I have not used Tech Tool or Discwarrior for 8 years or so. It just seems that Mac OS has gotten much better and they are irrelevant. I have not missed them at all. Should I get one/ other or both still? I think Discwarrior was the stronger solution for Mac Hard drive issues. Discwarrior I remember not having a recovery disk, whereas I remember an "e" disc from tech tool. You need both?

That said. IF I use SD, and don't have either of those, then I'm screwed? or There is that option of booting online, but you can't do that right at crisis time?

Also, even it TM is not bootable, it can become the replacement Mac OS of choice still right? So even the SD clone does not need to be the first in the line of restoration?

Final question: I currently don't bother to save the last OS. Should I? You just go to the apple store and find El Capitan and download it and keep it on the Mac HD? Or couldn't I just do that in a crisis anyway?
Posted By: tacit Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 09:49 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
I never had a Trojan as they implied in the email? Again, I keep thinking they are saying a Trojan was on my local computer and that created the window to hack the password... (I've never had a thorough discussion about it with them, they don't seem to want to waste time on past issues)


Correct. You never had a Trojan on your local computer.

Originally Posted By: kevs
I assume Tacit you don't bother with AV either...


Right. I do use antivirus on my Windows machines, but not on my Macs.

Originally Posted By: kevs
So the only reason to have an AV is if I"m so lame as to accidentally double click an email attachment or someone comes into my house and installs something sinister...? But in short, no one it seems who is very Mac savvy recommends bothering with AV. My web hoster would probably would still insist Sophos would have prevented it...even if I explained all this, my guess.


Yep, exactly. Having AV on your computer would not have prevented that hack, from the sound of it.

WordPress is popular because it's easy to use, but it's also the Windows 98 of Web security. There are a lot of ways to hack it, and the bad guys don't even target specific sites--they use totally automated tools that just scan thousands of sites an hour looking for weak WordPress installs and automatically hacking them. If you fail to install WordPress security updates or you use weak passwords, you will be hacked. It's only a matter of time.

Originally Posted By: kevs
BTW for wordpress, I don't remember doing security updates. I have some type of AV there I think-- some spam plugin, and I update that, and I update Wordpress, or I think it updates itself now..[/spam]

The Akismet anti-spam plugin will protect you from spam comments, also the bane of WordPress sites, but will not in any way deter hackers. For that, I recommend a three-pronged approach: use strong passwords, check for and install updates regularly, and use the free WordFence security plugin, which will make your site far more difficult to hack.

[quote=kevs]CCC- SD, So if I stay with SD, and my MacHD goes haywire, and I clone back with my SD clone, the recovery partition is not there? Why not-- SD seems to be pretty robust, how could they miss what the competitor could do? Will they fix that later? And isn't that a Mac thing embedded into the OS? And couldn't one add it on later anyway or you would never ever have that again?


I use Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine, myself. (I have three backup drives: two rotating backups that I make with Carbon Copy Cloner, and one large Time Machine backup. I also have a Mac server running in a remote location that I backup to using a program called CrashPlan, in case a fire burns down the house. I am paranoid about backups because I make my living with my laptop, and if I lose the data on it I'm in big trouble.)

SD doesn't seem to be as on top of operating system changes as CCC. I don't know how it handles drive recovery partitions, but I do know that since about OS X 10.7 or so, SD has steadily been getting less reliable.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 09:58 PM
Originally Posted By: tacit

SD doesn't seem to be as on top of operating system changes as CCC. I don't know how it handles drive recovery partitions, but I do know that since about OS X 10.7 or so, SD has steadily been getting less reliable.


I've been using SD ever since OS 10.9 (Mavericks) came out, and it is definitely reliable (and at times has been a life saver!). It DOES NOT backup/clone the Recovery HD partition, whereas CCC does. But, as I mentioned above, that is not an issue for me, and it is easy to re-create (I provided details above on how to do that).

Also, why do you say "SD has steadily been getting less reliable"? Again, that is certainly not the case for me.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/08/16 10:34 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Honestone, I have not used Tech Tool or Discwarrior for 8 years or so. It just seems that Mac OS has gotten much better and they are irrelevant. I have not missed them at all. Should I get one/ other or both still? I think Discwarrior was the stronger solution for Mac Hard drive issues. Discwarrior I remember not having a recovery disk, whereas I remember an "e" disc from tech tool. You need both?


Once in a while, Disk Warrior can do some additional "magic" that no other disk maintenance/repair program can do. But, I have yet to run into such instances.

The most recent version of Disk Warrior also comes on a bootable flash drive (I have the prior version, so I would need to boot that after booting from my SD clone (if I want to do repairs on my internal SSD)). TechTool Pro has an eDrive feature, which is a bootable volume that allows one to do maintenance/repairs on one's internal drive/SSD. (It is actually similar to the Recovery HD partition in functionality).

The important thing to remember is that maintaining Macs (and external devices) is just like owning and maintaining a car. The more cleanup/maintenance one does, the occurrence of problems/issues becomes less and less. Myself, I use Onyx, TechTool Pro, and SuperDuper! once a week (typically on Saturday mornings) to cleanup, check, repair, and backup/clone my internal SSD on each of my Macs to an external device (I actually have two external devices that I can boot the SD clone from. I also am constantly removing unnecessary stuff from each of my Macs on a daily basis).

So, to answer your question, no, you do not need both of them. But for me, with the eDrive feature, TechTool Pro is easier to use.

Originally Posted By: kevs
That said. IF I use SD, and don't have either of those, then I'm screwed? or There is that option of booting online, but you can't do that right at crisis time?


If you have not been maintaining the external drive that the SD clone is on, then that drive could go bad. Using Disk Utility, TechTool Pro, or Disk Warrior to keep that external drive in as best of shape as possible would minimize the crisis you describe. Given that it is a mechanical device, there is only so much one can do. But, at times, you'll get some warning "signs" that the drive is getting bad, and thus can take action.

But yes, if the external HD (or external SSD) that the SD clone is on goes "kaput", you would be "somewhat" screwed.

Originally Posted By: kevs
Also, even it TM is not bootable, it can become the replacement Mac OS of choice still right? So even the SD clone does not need to be the first in the line of restoration?


A TM backup does not contain a backup of the OS. So, in a catastrophe (assuming the internal drive/SSD is still OK), the recovery process would be:

1. Some way, boot your machine "externally". If the Recovery HD partition is still OK, you can boot your problematic machine from it.

2. Erase, and Format your internal drive using Disk Utility (that feature is part of the Recovery HD partition. (Disk Utility will also tell you how "healthy" the internal drive/SD is (as will TechTool Pro)). I don't know about other methods (except by doing it from an SD clone).

3. Perform a fresh, "virgin" installation of the OS.

4. Re-boot your Mac, and then use Migration Assistant to migrate/copy stuff from the TM backup.

Originally Posted By: kevs
Final question: I currently don't bother to save the last OS. Should I? You just go to the apple store and find El Capitan and download it and keep it on the Mac HD? Or couldn't I just do that in a crisis anyway?


You can do it in a crisis, but why wait until then? You should be able to go to the App Store and download/re-download the latest version of the OS you are using. For me, that would be OS 10.11.4, El Capitan. (And yes, you should be able to download it). When the download is complete, a file entitled "Install OS X El Capitan" will be in the Applications folder. It is then best to make at least one copy of that file somewhere else (and in fact, copy it also to the device that your backup is on).

Again, as I described above, having the file somewhere else (and especially on a backup (SD in my case)) comes in very handy when doing a recovery/restore.

To sum all this up, quite a lot of this depends on the following:

1. Which backup tool you use.

2. How meticulous one is in performing disk cleanup, maintenance, repairs, and backups.

3. How old are the devices one has (by that I mean internal drive/SD, and external drive/SD).
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/09/16 06:30 PM
Nice post H, thanks.

But why pay Discwarrior year after year, not a cheap software, why not buy when have to to? That's what I concluded 7 years ago, and still have not had to. Ditto for Tech tool Pro, which I found even weaker. I've never had Onyx solve anything. But I could change my mind about all this at any moment! So that's why I like to ask...

My scheduled backups from SD are once a day. Why not do daily?

The e drive in Tech tool pro has been superseded by recovery drive no? And BTW, there is an online version of that, I've never tried it.

I just bought brand new externals, two weeks ago. The old ones were working perfectly, but it was 5 years, people on forums say that 3-5 years is a good time to swap, you agree? I run test on the drives every blue moon. I used to test once a month, but others have said don't bother. Wait till there is an issue... all this pre-disaster testing is supposedly passe, fragmentation etc etc long gone..

I'll download El Capitan, but I guess you then upgrade to the version exactly are on later.. .1,2. .3... It seems there already in app folder: Install OS X El Capitan 6GB, maybe it's left there anyway?


But it'll go on Mac HD, not external. The external backups will be overwritten by SD, Time Machine is good in that it is versioned and will exist somewhere in there for weeks..

Any guess as to why SD did not solve the recovery drive thing? The developer is super smart, you would have to be to develop that. Easier to lower rate to $28, than to include recovery? any guess on that? And it's still not there? With CCC it just goes over with the Mac HD copy?
Posted By: ryck Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/09/16 11:18 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
But why pay Discwarrior year after year, not a cheap software….?

Year after year? I paid $64 (Canadian) for DW V4 in 2007 and $24 for a major upgrade in 2009. That's it until now….equal to about 81 cents a month.

Originally Posted By: kevs
….why not buy when have to to?

If you have a major calamity, that could be a bit late.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 12:25 AM
Originally Posted By: ryck
Originally Posted By: kevs
….why not buy when have to to?

If you have a major calamity, that could be a bit late.

In the old days you had to wait to get your DiscWarrior disc in the mail, and that was unacceptable in the face of a calamity, but now that DW can be d/l'ed it's never too late as long as you've got a bootable volume.

DW may not be terribly pricey over the long haul*, but the latest upgrade is awfully pricey, and while it has got new extras, it doesn't improve on the functionality of an app that has, let's face it, gotten less and less important with each new version of OS X.

I'm with kevs on this one: I'll buy the upgrade when I need it, when "What if?" has turned to "Aw @#$^! What the %^&# do I do now?", not on spec.

Edit: *And all those "Only x¢/month!" items do add up.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 01:32 AM
Thanks Ryck/ Artie

Thanks for reminding me about Discwarrior, I had forgot about it totally, and I used to have it in the early 2000s. Maybe I used it a couple of times. I remember that era of mind-bending Mac instability.

Artie, I just went to the site, so the core app is a download, and the flash drive must come in the mail. $120 man that 's a lot of any software these days. And how would you know if could help? Before this post (forgetting all about it), I would just assume the hardrive is fried...

Has Macs disc utility come close to doing what DW does? Is there a more economical product?

Finally, back to my question about SD, and I see Ryck uses it too:

Any guess as to why SD did not solve the recovery drive thing? The developer is super smart, you would have to be to develop that. Easier to lower rate to $28, than to include recovery? any guess on that? And it's still not there? With CCC it just goes over with the Mac HD copy?


Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 04:06 AM
TechTool Pro costs less than Disk Warrior (in fact, there have been a couple of recent sales of TechTool Pro for $39.95).

Paying for upgrades is definitely the wise thing to do. Anything less is asking for trouble. In fact, there are instances where one must pay for the upgrade in order to use the new version with the new OS.

For me, Disk Utility has shortcomings, and Tech Tool Pro, a proven, solid utility, does so much more. And, it is so much easier to use it, with its eDrive feature.

Again, as I stated above, one key fact is being meticulous in taking care of one's machine. And, my analogy with that and taking care of a car is so, so accurate.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 04:37 AM
I used to do a "monthly maintenance" routine with Onyx, etc I had tech tool pro, disk warrior, I checked all my disc every month, and then a few people on this or another Mac forum said stop wasting your time and just deal with issues as they come. That was about 3-4 years ago, and I have had no issues since. I tend to agree then that the maintenance routine is a thing of the mid 2000's when Macs were very unstable. I'm not sure the car analogy works, but I do take my car it in every year and a half for a/b services.... but not every month.

So it's not even about the money for the apps, it's more about the time drain, and that it may not be needed or even helping.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 05:33 AM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Time Machine backups ARE NOT BOOTABLE however you can boot from a Recovery drive and then restore from a Time Machine backup. (Emphasis added)

Perhaps it's no more than a nomenclature issue, but that and

Originally Posted By: Apple Support
You can use OS X Recovery to do the following:

Restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup.

sound like they contradict a more recent post in this thread, i.e.

Originally Posted By: honestone
A TM backup does not contain a backup of the OS. So, in a catastrophe (assuming the internal drive/SSD is still OK), the recovery process would be:

1. Some way, boot your machine "externally". If the Recovery HD partition is still OK, you can boot your problematic machine from it.

2. Erase, and Format your internal drive using Disk Utility (that feature is part of the Recovery HD partition. (Disk Utility will also tell you how "healthy" the internal drive/SD is (as will TechTool Pro)). I don't know about other methods (except by doing it from an SD clone).

3. Perform a fresh, "virgin" installation of the OS.

4. Re-boot your Mac, and then use Migration Assistant to migrate/copy stuff from the TM backup. (Emphasis added)

My understanding has always been that you can do a complete restore of OS X from Time Machine, but I think clarification and resolution of any doubt/confusion that this thread may be causing will be helpful.

Thanks.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 05:58 AM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Artie, I just went to the [DiskWarrior] site, so the core app is a download, and the flash drive must come in the mail. $120 man that 's a lot of any software these days. And how would you know if could help? Before this post (forgetting all about it), I would just assume the hardrive is fried...

Has Macs disc utility come close to doing what DW does? Is there a more economical product?

I believe Disk Utility is more robust today than it was years ago, but I've got no reason to believe that it's anywhere near the equivalent of DW yet.

As honestone pointed out, TechTool Pro can be had for significantly less than DW costs, but as long as I've been around FTM (and MFIF earlier) DW has been pretty much everyone's number one choice...supported by many "DW fixed what TTP could NOT fix" posts. (All the apps I've run across that perform tasks similar to those of DW and TTP cost in the $100 range, but that's by no means a given.)

Originally Posted By: kevs
Finally, back to my question about SD, and I see Ryck uses it too:

Any guess as to why SD did not solve the recovery drive thing? The developer is super smart, you would have to be to develop that. Easier to lower rate to $28, than to include recovery? any guess on that? And it's still not there? With CCC it just goes over with the Mac HD copy?

That's really a question for Dave Nanian, kevs, but I'll take a guess that it simply comes down to methodology.

CCC uses "rsync" (V1 has posted about rsync many times, and I gather that he's quite fond of it.), which obviously can be tailored to clone the recovery partition while SD apparently uses code/methodology/technique(?) that just plain cannot do the same.

But yeah, you clone your boot drive with CCC, and if it's got a recovery partition it's part of the clone. (Is booting into a cloned recovery partition the same command-R boot as booting into an OS X installed one?)
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 06:02 AM
btw good time to ask, for a couple of years I've seen Hardware growl going off: recover drive mounted, recovery drive unmounted. Why is this drive constantly mounting and unmounting? I'm not doing anything.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 06:43 AM
Originally Posted By: honestone
The most recent version of Disk Warrior also comes on a bootable flash drive (I have the prior version [DW v 4.x], so I would need to boot that after booting from my SD clone (if I want to do repairs on my internal SSD)). (Emphasis added)

Originally Posted By: honestone
Using Macs since 1984
Current Systems:
Mid 2013 13" MacBook Air with 251 gig Samsung SSD
Late 2012 Mac Mini with 256 gig Samsung 840 Pro SSD
Using OS 10.11.4 on both
Make SuperDuper! backups for both machines
Canon Multifunction Inkjet Printer (Emphasis added)

Originally Posted By: Alsoft
DiskWarrior 4 is not compatible with OS X 10.11 or later.

Just a reminder that the prior version of DiskWarrior you're running is incompatible with the version of OS X you're running.
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 02:59 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
My understanding has always been that you can do a complete restore of OS X from Time Machine, but I think clarification and resolution of any doubt/confusion that this thread may be causing will be helpful.

Thanks.

TIME MACHINE BACKUPS ARE NOT BOOTABLE but you can restore your system from a Time Machine backup by booting from the Recovery Drive.

When you boot from the Recovery Drive you have four options available…
  1. Restore from a Time Machine Backup. This literally copies your system from the Time Machine backup to the hard drive and you can choose to restore from any point in time. For example a couple of weeks ago something happened to my Keychain and I was unable to logon or do anything to get into my system. So I booted from the Recovery Drive, chose Restore from a Time Machine backup, picked a time from the previous evening when I knew the Keychain was working and Restored my system with no real loss of data. 😎
  2. Reinstall OS X — which is exactly what it sounds like. The latest version is downloaded from the internet, and you get a fresh clean installation of OS X. As this is a normal install you can also run Migration Assistant and recover your files, apps, settings, etc. from a Time Machine backup or another bootable volume.
  3. Get Help Online — I haven't tried that one yet but it seems pretty obvious
  4. Disk Utility — a full version of Disk Utility that can be used to run Disk First Aid, partition/repartition/Erase the HD or volume.

Originally Posted By: artie505
DW has been pretty much everyone's number one choice...supported by many "DW fixed what TTP could NOT fix" posts. (All the apps I've run across that perform tasks similar to those of DW and TTP cost in the $100 range, but that's by no means a given.)

Not quite ][i]everyones's number one choice. smile Not a hit on Diskwarrior, it is a fine and useful app, but I have used TTP for many years and have never found a situation it could not handle. But that is just my experience.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 03:08 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505

Just a reminder that the prior version of DiskWarrior you're running is incompatible with the version of OS X you're running.


Yes, I am completely aware of that, and thus use Tech Tool Pro instead (and keeping it updated, so as to be proactive instead of reactive for issues.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 03:31 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
I used to do a "monthly maintenance" routine with Onyx, etc I had tech tool pro, disk warrior, I checked all my disc every month, and then a few people on this or another Mac forum said stop wasting your time and just deal with issues as they come. That was about 3-4 years ago, and I have had no issues since. I tend to agree then that the maintenance routine is a thing of the mid 2000's when Macs were very unstable. I'm not sure the car analogy works, but I do take my car it in every year and a half for a/b services.... but not every month.

So it's not even about the money for the apps, it's more about the time drain, and that it may not be needed or even helping.


I realize that the time it takes for any task needs to be considered. The car analogy is pertinent, as one can do some useful things on their own between trips to the dealer for service. For example, such tasks as checking air pressure in tires, changing the cabin air filter, changing the air filter, using a device like Battery Tender (https://www.zoro.com/battery-tender-batt...mp;gclsrc=aw.ds) to keep the battery fully charged (and getting more life out of it), and changing fuses are things one can do for their own. And of course keep it clean.

For my weekly disk cleanup/maintenance/repair and backup tasks for both of my machines, I am actually multi-tasking and doing something else useful while those processes are running, and the timing works out perfectly. But, if I were to just do those tasks without doing something else, yes, that could deter me from doing it. But, I have been doing it for so long, it is second nature to me.

The one thing that should be done every time one uses their machine is to get rid of unneeded stuff. That takes hardly any time at all. For example, I have a folder entitled "Useful Software" on each of my machines, and within it are folders for containing updates for software (some of those folders contain the original app too). When an update comes out, I download it, install it, make sure it works, save the update to the applicable folder, and get rid of the "next to next" most recent update. That is, if I have versions 1 and 2 of an update, with 2 being the most recent one, and 3 becomes available, after saving it, I get rid of #1. (By the way, and knock on wood, I've never had an issue with an update not working. But, I can always revert back to the prior good one).

I also am constantly deleting EMails on a daily basis, but given I use Outlook, they actually do not get removed permanently from the Identity "file" for Office 2011. To permanently get rid of them, as part of my weekly processing, I run a simple to use process to permanently get rid of them.

To sum up, it all depends on how much one is willing to do, whether one wants to be proactive or reactive for issues, and devoting the time and effort.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 03:42 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
?

Finally, back to my question about SD, and I see Ryck uses it too:

Any guess as to why SD did not solve the recovery drive thing? The developer is super smart, you would have to be to develop that. Easier to lower rate to $28, than to include recovery? any guess on that? And it's still not there? With CCC it just goes over with the Mac HD copy?


I also don't know why, but as I pointed out above, there are a couple of ways of re-creating it.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 03:44 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb

Not quite ][i]everyones's number one choice. smile Not a hit on Diskwarrior, it is a fine and useful app, but I have used TTP for many years and have never found a situation it could not handle. But that is just my experience.


Well said! That has been my experience also.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 03:50 PM
Thanks H, I'm very proactive, but someone suggested 7 years ago on this or another Mac forum, to let it go, not worry, (kind of like AV), and I've had no issues and have saved probably 200 hours of doing all that. My 2009 27" never broke once in any way. For cars, they have also come a long way from the 70's. I just take in my 2002 to the dealer every 18 months and they check all those things, no need for me to do anything you just listed.

Again curious : Any idea why hardware growl is always reporting recovery drive mounted/ unmounted, is that ok?


Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/10/16 07:10 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Again curious : Any idea why hardware growl is always reporting recovery drive mounted/ unmounted, is that ok?

There are a myriad of possibilities and without spending an inordinate amount of time searching your log files I can only speculate that is something running in background on your computer (apparently you have no small number of things running in background including Sophos). My best guess is one of those utilities is checking the Recovery Drive and in order to do that it would have to mount the volume (Recovery Drive is a volume on your boot drive and not a separate drive) then as a well behaved app dismounts the Recovery Drive when it finishes.

If you have several hours/days to spend you can probably isolate the culprit by removing everything from
  • /Library/LaunchAgents,
  • ~/Library/LaunchAgents,
  • /library/LaunchDaemons,
  • ~/Library/LaunchDaemons,
  • and System Preferences ➯ Users ➯ your account ➯ Login Items
being careful not to disable Hardware Growler of course — and then running the system to see if the mounts/dismounts recur. If they do then Hardware Grwoler may be the culprit otherwise — one at a time add back each of the Startup Items, LaunchDaemons, and LaunchAgents — rebooting and running for a day or two until you are confident the mounts/dismounts are not going to occur or the mounts and dismounts do recur. When the latter happens the culprit would be the last item reactivated.

FWIW I used to perform a regular ritual of maintenance routines including volume structure checks, surface scans, permission repair, file defragmentation, volume defragmentation, log rotation, etc., etc., etc. but over the years I have slowly abandoned all of that and my systems are more stable and run better and faster than ever. (The Keychain problem I mentioned earlier was, my own fault and related to a series of changes I was making attendant to converting/upgrading the 1.1 TB Fusion Drive in my Mac mini into separate 1TB SSD and HDs and not a maintenance or system glitch.)
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 12:07 AM
Thanks Joe, I'll let it go, but that was timely as we are talkign about the recovery drive, I've been seeing this for a year or two, recovery drive mounts/ unmounts. It's not a big deal, I'll eventually bail on the AV, so hopefully that's it, but it does not matter.

Interesting that you also don't do the maintenance anymore. Isn't it great not to have to bother? I think that's nice...

You may have been the the one to say don't bother anymore, but I cannot remember now....
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 02:57 AM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks H, I'm very proactive, but someone suggested 7 years ago on this or another Mac forum, to let it go, not worry, (kind of like AV), and I've had no issues and have saved probably 200 hours of doing all that. My 2009 27" never broke once in any way. For cars, they have also come a long way from the 70's. I just take in my 2002 to the dealer every 18 months and they check all those things, no need for me to do anything you just listed.


I have been reading the same thing on numerous Mac sites for quite some time, but I prefer to stay ahead of issues, instead of reacting to them (as long as I can do that, and for Macs and cars, I can). One never knows when an emergency can occur, but one can take necessary precautions.

As for automobiles, makes no difference what decade the vehicle was made in. It is always good to perform as much preventative maintenance as possible. Besides saving money (and for most things with cars, that is significant), one learns some things about their automobiles.

Simple example: cabin air filters can go "bad" after 12 months. For both cars that we own, they are a snap to replace. Also, I do not need to make an appointment with the dealer, drive down there and wait around until they are done, and then drive home. I just go to the auto parts store not far from where I live, purchase one for at least 70% less than the dealer would charge, drive back home, take out the old one, and install the new one. Total time: less than 1 1/2 hours. To me, besides the cost savings, and learning something about my car, that is a WAY more efficient use of my time.

In any event, to each his/her own. I just prefer to be more actively involved with my cars and computers (I also follow the same philosophy with other tasks/things).


Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 03:01 AM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb

FWIW I used to perform a regular ritual of maintenance routines including volume structure checks, surface scans, permission repair, file defragmentation, volume defragmentation, log rotation, etc., etc., etc. but over the years I have slowly abandoned all of that and my systems are more stable and run better and faster than ever. (The Keychain problem I mentioned earlier was, my own fault and related to a series of changes I was making attendant to converting/upgrading the 1.1 TB Fusion Drive in my Mac mini into separate 1TB SSD and HDs and not a maintenance or system glitch.)


I still do most of those tasks (don't know what "log rotation" is, but I do use Onyx to delete some logs), and both of my Macs always run "lean, clean, and mean". Given that both of my Macs now have SSDs (not hybrid drives), Volume Optimization is not longer applicable, nor recommended. I do though still use TechTool Pro to perform File Optimization.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 03:25 AM
If it makes you feel good H, but none of this is needed anymore.

In the 70 and 80s you had to change your oil every 3k miles? I bought a new 2002 Mercedes SLK, I've never done an oil change. It taken care of on the every 18th month visit. So yeah, things do change as per the year of the car. Same with the computer. Apple is on the case -- you may be doing a lot of busy work for for nothing.

...If it makes you feel good

I tested it, and I'm here to report it's not needed, and Joe said as much, and he knows a lot more about Macs that I do.!
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 03:13 PM
Originally Posted By: honestone
I do though still use TechTool Pro to perform File Optimization.
File optimization is no longer recommended for exactly the same reasons volume optimization is no longer recommended. It causes unnecessary write operations that contribute to the early demise of SSDs and has no noticeable effect on performance.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 03:20 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
If it makes you feel good H, but none of this is needed anymore.

In the 70 and 80s you had to change your oil every 3k miles? I bought a new 2002 Mercedes SLK, I've never done an oil change. It taken care of on the every 18th month visit. So yeah, things do change as per the year of the car. Same with the computer. Apple is on the case -- you may be doing a lot of busy work for for nothing.

...If it makes you feel good

I tested it, and I'm here to report it's not needed, and Joe said as much, and he knows a lot more about Macs that I do.!


It not only makes me feel good, but I am actually learning useful things.

I do agree with you about oil changes. We have a 2005 Mercedes CLK 320, and a 2013 Toyota Camry V6 XLE, and I do not change the oil myself. For the Mercedes, I do take it to a third party place (very reliable), and they charge less than half than what the dealer charges for that service. There are similar savings on brakes.

But, changing air and cabin air filters, checking air pressure in tires, changing fuses, and charging the battery are not difficult at all. For my Macs, as I said, I am multi-tasking while the disk maintenance is going on, so I am thus not waisting time and effort.

But again, if it makes you happy to just wait for things to happen, fine. I myself will continue to get in front of things.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/11/16 11:46 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
TIME MACHINE BACKUPS ARE NOT BOOTABLE but you can restore your system from a Time Machine backup by booting from the Recovery Drive.

When you boot from the Recovery Drive you have four options available…
[including]
Restore from a Time Machine Backup. This literally copies your system from the Time Machine backup to the hard drive and you can choose to restore from any point in time. (Emphasis added)

Thanks for setting the record straight.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/12/16 03:21 AM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: honestone
I do though still use TechTool Pro to perform File Optimization.
File optimization is no longer recommended for exactly the same reasons volume optimization is no longer recommended. It causes unnecessary write operations that contribute to the early demise of SSDs and has no noticeable effect on performance.


Hmm, did not know that! Thanks for the tip. That saves me some time when I use TechTool Pro's features.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 02:40 PM
Final question H,/ and or Joe, what it better in crisis, if you erase you Mac hardrive: Doing a clone back from a bootable drive or using migration assistant? Are they the same effectiveness? Or are they perfectly equal?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 02:57 PM
They should be equal in terms of recovering data but cloning back is probably faster. That's the way I would go (and I have done it a few times).
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 03:02 PM
Thanks Jon, I was wondering that maybe migration is not as good. Maybe itunes or other links wont work as good as a pure clone back.

But if you have SD then you don't want to clone back right? You want to download the OS and then do migration? To get that recovery drive?

BTW, if disk utility see issues that it cannot fix, and then you try Disc Warrior or tech tool, and it does not dix it, then erasing wont help probably, you need a new drive?
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 03:16 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
BTW, if disk utility see issues that it cannot fix, and then you try Disc Warrior or tech tool, and it does not dix it, then erasing wont help probably, you need a new drive?

Nope. If none of the utilities work, then nuke and pave, i.e. erase and reinstall, is the way you want to go.

If that doesn't help, then your drive becomes a prime suspect.

(By the way, the most obvious symptoms of a bad HDD are no longer issues with SSDs, so what particular symptoms are we looking for now?)
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 03:22 PM
Originally Posted By: jchuzi
They should be equal in terms of recovering data but cloning back is probably faster. That's the way I would go (and I have done it a few times).

I seem to have better success with preservation of data when I nuke, pave, and migrate than when I restore from a clone.

Do you have any experience in that regard?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 03:44 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
Originally Posted By: jchuzi
They should be equal in terms of recovering data but cloning back is probably faster. That's the way I would go (and I have done it a few times).

I seem to have better success with preservation of data when I nuke, pave, and migrate than when I restore from a clone.

Do you have any experience in that regard?
No, I have never done it.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 03:44 PM
Thanks Artie, I'm just trying to get my head around for the future.

Migration assistant has done very well for you? Just as good as Cloning back a bootable drive?

And does it happen that DU and even Discwarrior Techtool, cannot fix a drive, but erasing it solves whatever issues was there? Sometimes you don't have to replace the drive?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 03:47 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Jon, I was wondering that maybe migration is not as good. Maybe itunes or other links wont work as good as a pure clone back.

But if you have SD then you don't want to clone back right? You want to download the OS and then do migration? To get that recovery drive?

BTW, if disk utility see issues that it cannot fix, and then you try Disc Warrior or tech tool, and it does not dix it, then erasing wont help probably, you need a new drive?
You have a point about the recovery drive. That's one reason why I switched from SD to CCC as my cloning app of choice. The other, more important, was that an El Cap clone made with SD wasn't bootable, although it was supposed to be (and Dave Nanian, the tech support guy, couldn't solve it either). CCC has worked flawlessly for me.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 04:00 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Artie, I'm just trying to get my head around for the future.

Migration assistant has done very well for you? Just as good as Cloning back a bootable drive?

And does it happen that DU and even Discwarrior Techtool, cannot fix a drive, but erasing it solves whatever issues was there? Sometimes you don't have to replace the drive?

I prefer nuke & pave because it gives me a clean OS; it does take more time than restoring from a clone, but I always feel like I've got a "snappier" system after I've done it.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that in my memory of 10+ years of MFIF and FTM, far more issues have been resolved by reinstalling OS X than by replacing drives.

OS X can go bad in myriad ways that have nothing to do with the drive on which it's installed, but there are only a few specific sets of circumstances that indicate a bad drive...probably even less with the advent of SSDs, and, as a matter of fact, I'm not even sure what symptoms indicate a bad SSD.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 04:10 PM
Originally Posted By: jchuzi
You have a point about the recovery drive. That's one reason why I switched from SD to CCC as my cloning app of choice. The other, more important, was that an El Cap clone made with SD wasn't bootable, although it was supposed to be (and Dave Nanian, the tech support guy, couldn't solve it either). CCC has worked flawlessly for me.

What's the point of using SD if it can't produce a bootable clone and won't be there for you in case of an emergency? (I thought that issue had been resolved.)
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 04:14 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Thanks Jon, I was wondering that maybe migration is not as good. Maybe itunes or other links wont work as good as a pure clone back.

I can't answer for Jon, but that has not been my experience. The only link problem I have ever had was when I moved the iTunes library to another drive but that was a self-induced problem. Recovering from a clone is less time consuming however.

My reason for having a clone is not as a backup rather it is lodged in my firm belief in McGillicuddy's corollary to Murphy's law, If any thing can go wrong it will and at the worst possible time. If I am facing a deadline and have a failure, I can work from the clone to complete the project and worry about recovering the system later.
Originally Posted By: kevs
But if you have SD then you don't want to clone back right? You want to download the OS and then do migration? To get that recovery drive?

Unless there is a failure of the drive mechanism you should not lose the Recovery Drive, but in the event of a complete mechanical drive failure, while there are other ways of creating a Recovery Drive, what you suggest is by far the easiest and most reliable. Besides that you end up with the latest release of OS X. 🤓
Originally Posted By: kevs
BTW, if disk utility see issues that it cannot fix, and then you try Disc Warrior or tech tool, and it does not dix it, then erasing wont help probably, you need a new drive?

  • Disk Utility, Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, and Drive Genius can repair damage to the volume structure of a drive that is the directory and file structure. (That used to be a far more common problem than it is with the latest versions of OS X. I have not seen an instance of that in years.)
  • Although it has improved significantly over the years Disk Utility is not particularly robust at repairing volume structure errors that Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, or Drive Genius can repair.
  • There are also situations where Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, and Drive Genius may fail but one of the other in the triumvirate may be able to repair and contrary to popular belief even Diskwarrior is not infallible.
  • Erasing the disk does not repair the volume structure, it replaces the directory with a new empty directory which IS infallible except
    • you lose the entire contents of the drive and
    • It cannot and does not correct for mechanical drive failure
  • TechTool Pro and Drive Genius can perform a surface scan of a drive which does two good things
    • identifies any new bad data sectors found on the drive which in the case of an HD is the most reliable indicator of impending mechanical drive failure ie. the magnetic media is flaking off the surface of the drive platters and
    • will force the drive mechanism to remap any bad sectors found to spare sectors that are on the drive for that specific purpose
  • The presence of new bad data sectors on an HD are an indication that it is time to
    • Get very serious about backups
    • start shopping for a new SSD or HD.
Posted By: Ira L Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 04:26 PM
Related to the original title of this post, a study done by Concordia University says that anti-virus software can actually make you less safe from viruses.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 05:00 PM
Originally Posted By: jchuzi
You have a point about the recovery drive. That's one reason why I switched from SD to CCC as my cloning app of choice.


Regarding the Recovery Drive, if one does not have the file "Install OS X "whatever OS"" contained within the SD backup, then yes, the Recovery Drive will not be there upon a "complete" SD restore. But, I have the file "Install OS X El Capitan" on both of my SD backups/clones (for each of my machines), and hence if I do a complete SD recovery, I can easily re-create the Recovery HD partition. As jchuzi so correctly states, that is the fastest way to do a restore, and be back in business quickly.

The other thing I can do, especially with having that file on the SD backup, is that after I boot my Mac to that SD clone, use Disk Utility there to Erase and Format the internal SSD on my Mac, then run the "Install OS X El Capitan" installer to get a fresh, "virgin" El Capitan OS, re-boot my machine from the internal SSD, and use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the needed "stuff" from the SD clone. Of course that method also re-creates the Recovery HD partition (which I really don't need, given that I have TechToo, Pro and the file "Install OS X El Capitan").

Originally Posted By: jchuzi
The other, more important, was that an El Cap clone made with SD wasn't bootable, although it was supposed to be (and Dave Nanian, the tech support guy, couldn't solve it either). CCC has worked flawlessly for me.


That is false! After I read that, I quit Chrome, went to System Preferences, selected my SD clone/backup I created last week to restart my Mac MIni. and it successfully restarted from that SD backup/clone. It was slow (via a Firewire 800 connection to an external Seagate 7200 rpm drive), but it worked (I have done this previously also). And in fact, I verified that it worked after OS 10.11.1 was released (see below why I waited until OS 10.11., instead of first going with OS 10.11). So, I am unclear where this false stuff is coming from.

When El Capitan first came out, SD was made compatible with it, and in fact, it is one of my required products that need to be compatible before I upgrade to a new OS (the others are Office 2011, Onyx, 1Password, and TechTool Pro; in fact, I actually upgraded from OS 10.10.5 to OS 10.11.1, as 1) TechTool Pro and Onyx were not initially compatible with OS 10.11, and 2) a beta for OS 10.11.1 first appeared in August 2015, almost a full 2 months before OS 10.11).

I am still planning on purchasing a 512 gig SSD to place inside an external case, and I will use that for backups. But, as I had previously posted, I still can't find an inexpensive, slim external case that has a Firewire 800 interface. For now though, my two external 7200 RPM drives I have (with Seagate mechanisms) are good enough (for my mid 2013 Mac Book Air, I have a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire 800 connector/adapter, which works real well).
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 05:25 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505

What's the point of using SD if it can't produce a bootable clone and won't be there for you in case of an emergency? (I thought that issue had been resolved.)


Exactly! But, as I mentioned in my post above, the notion that one cannot boot their Mac from a "El Capitan" SD backup/clone is definitely false. The version of SuperDuper! that came out right before OS 10.11 was released has always worked fine.
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 05:33 PM
Yes, I know that SD should work well with El Capitan. Whatever the reason, I was unable to produce a bootable clone although you, and many others, report no issue. I finally gave up and bought CCC.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 06:11 PM
Thanks everyone, great posts/ and info.

Ok, I'm leaning to in emergency: use DU, then go online from the clone drive to : Tech Tool, Drive Genius,DW ... (in that order, cheapest to most expensive), and if none on those work:

Erase, and install the current OS, then use migration assistant.

Artie says having the pure OS is the way to go.


My SD backups, have been bootable and working ok, I'm open to CCC, but from info here and what I just outlined (thanks H for info), could stay with SD fine.


Question H: I do have install El Capitan in my apps folder on my desktop. I'm not sure why it's there. I did the download the other day and got a bit scared and quit when it said, "you already have installed", maybe it downloaded anyway? Or was there somehow otherwise.

Today, I did the download ElCapitan, to laptop, but nothing downloaded. Am I doing something wrong? I saw translucent wheel spinning in the upper left of App store window, but no progress bar and no download upon completion. How does this work exactly? progress bar, how long take, And does it matter later that your downloaded version may not be the most up to date later? I suppose you can the just update the OS at that point?

(also, I could just copy the Install El Capitan in my desktop app folder to the app folder of the laptop..?) Thanks.

Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 06:22 PM
Originally Posted By: jchuzi
Yes, I know that SD should work well with El Capitan. Whatever the reason, I was unable to produce a bootable clone although you, and many others, report no issue. I finally gave up and bought CCC.


You are actually the first person I have heard that had an issue. As I stated, the version of SD that came out right before OS 10.11 was released, v2.8 (back on September 20th), worked right away with El Capitan. As I also mentioned, I did not actually move to El Capitan until V10.11.1 was released at the end of October 2015, and SuperDuper! worked fine with it.

I had recently read that OS 10.12 will be arriving in the fall (http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/os-x-10-12/). What I will do, after insuring that my 5 critical applications work with OS 10.12, is to:

1. Install all necessary software updates for OS 10.12 compatibility (maybe will need to do some of those after installing OS 10.12 in step 6 below).

2. Download the file "Install OS X "(whatever name)"" from the App Store.

3. Go through my weekly disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs, and backup processing for both of my Macs. (This will also insure that I have the file for OS 10.12 "Install OS X ..." on each SD backup/clone.

4. Boot my Mac to that SD backup/clone.

5. Use Disk Utility there to Erase and Format the internal SSD on each of my machines.

6. Run the OS 10.12 "Install OS X ..." installer, creating a fresh, virgin OS 10.12 OS system. That of course will create the OS 10.12 Recovery HD partition (even though I don't need it, unless something drastically changes with TechTool pro).

7. Restart each of my machines from OS 10.12.

8. Use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the "needed stuff" from the SD backup/clone.

Then, away I go!
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 06:29 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs


(also, I could just copy the Install El Capitan in my desktop app folder to the app folder of the laptop..?) Thanks.



Yes, you can. Then, and this is critical, copy that "install OS X El Capitan" file to another folder/location. In fact, make sure it is on your SD backup/clone, again in another location (I have a folder entitled "OS 10.11 & Upgrades" in a separate location on my SSD, and it of course winds up in the same location on the SD backup/clone). The reason is, once you run "Install OS X El Capitan" from the Applications Folder, it gets deleted. But, that does not happen running it from anywhere else. (the same will be true for any future OS X (OS 10.12 coming in the fall)).
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 07:20 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
...as a matter of fact, I'm not even sure what symptoms indicate a bad SSD.

As far as I know there has been no scientific study of SSD failure equivalent to Google Labs landmark study of HD failure that identified new bad data blocks as the best indicator of impending failure and at the same time pointed out S.M.A.R.T. testing was nearly useless because of the manufacturer's tendency to bias the failure levels so high they do not indicate anything short of total failure.

However, S.M.A.R.T. is built into SSDs as well as HDs and using a tool such as TechTool Pro 8, which reports each of the individual S.M.A.R.T. tests and not just the summary pass/fail results reported by Disk Utility, Drive Genius, and a host of other utilities. As with HDs not all drives report all the various S.M.A.R.T. values but viewed with an informed eye there are values or value trends that could be indicative of drive health such as Total Bad Blocks, Wear Leveling count, Used Reserve Block Count, Reallocation Event Count, Program Fail Count, and Erase fail count that can be informative. (FWIW those are among the thirty individual S.M.A.R.T. values reported by the OWC Mercure Electra SSD in TechTool Pro 8.)
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/13/16 09:55 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
...as a matter of fact, I'm not even sure what symptoms indicate a bad SSD.

As far as I know there has been no scientific study of SSD failure equivalent to Google Labs landmark study of HD failure that identified new bad data blocks as the best indicator of impending failure and at the same time pointed out S.M.A.R.T. testing was nearly useless because of the manufacturer's tendency to bias the failure levels so high they do not indicate anything short of total failure.

However, S.M.A.R.T. is built into SSDs as well as HDs and using a tool such as TechTool Pro 8, which reports each of the individual S.M.A.R.T. tests and not just the summary pass/fail results reported by Disk Utility, Drive Genius, and a host of other utilities. As with HDs not all drives report all the various S.M.A.R.T. values but viewed with an informed eye there are values or value trends that could be indicative of drive health such as Total Bad Blocks, Wear Leveling count, Used Reserve Block Count, Reallocation Event Count, Program Fail Count, and Erase fail count that can be informative. (FWIW those are among the thirty individual S.M.A.R.T. values reported by the OWC Mercure Electra SSD in TechTool Pro 8.)


Thanks for the detailed information about S.M.A.R.T. I will definitely look at the results of using the S.M.A.R.T. feature of TechTool Pro.

(BTW, an update for TechTool Pro, v8.0.4, just came out. I downloaded and installed it, just completed my weekly "disk" tasks, and as expected, it worked like a charm!)
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/14/16 07:57 AM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
However, S.M.A.R.T. is built into SSDs as well as HDs and using a tool such as TechTool Pro 8....

With all the talk about TTP I decided to fire up my v 6 to see if its disk checking functions, surface scan and S.M.A.R.T. test, still run in El Cap on my Mid 2015 MBP as they did on my Mid 2010 MBP, and I found that it launches and immediately freezes.

I wonder what changed?
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/14/16 01:12 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
I wonder what changed?

Either a Unix command or an API (Applications Program Interface) used in TTP 6 is the most likely culprit. However Micromat NEVER condones using any version of TTP that has not been thoroughly vetted for the upgrade version of OS X you are running. Update versions are generally okay however.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/14/16 02:57 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
I wonder what changed?

Either a Unix command or an API (Applications Program Interface) used in TTP 6 is the most likely culprit. However Micromat NEVER condones using any version of TTP that has not been thoroughly vetted for the upgrade version of OS X you are running. Update versions are generally okay however.

Thanks.

I wouldn't have guessed that anything that changed with a machine upgrade would affect an app's running.

I got the same pop-up when I launched TTP on my 2015 machine as I had previously gotten on my 2010 machine, and the only reason I even tried on either is that it's been posted here (by you, I think) that it was really only the OS X testing portions of TTP that were in question but that the disk testing portions were OK to run.
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/14/16 03:40 PM
Originally Posted By: artie505
I wouldn't have guessed that anything that changed with a machine upgrade would affect an app's running.

I got the same pop-up when I launched TTP on my 2015 machine as I had previously gotten on my 2010 machine, and the only reason I even tried on either is that it's been posted here (by you, I think) that it was really only the OS X testing portions of TTP that were in question but that the disk testing portions were OK to run.

My use of the term upgrade apparently caused confusion. I was thinking in terms of software upgrades ie. going from OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) to OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) not hardware upgrades. My use of the term update was intended to refer to software updates, ie. OS X 10.11.3 TO 10.11.4.

It is not uncommon for Apple to change the arguments (options) of commands and APIs, change what they do, or even eliminate them altogether as part of an OS upgrade. Some changes may simply break the app and cause it not to work, others may actually result in unintended damage to the system. Such changes are announced well in advance but not all developers keep up with the changes and even those that do may find they have misconstrued the effect of a change, so careful testing is essential for safety.

Unless an app such as Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro, Drive Genius, MacPilot, OnyX, Tinkertool, Cocktail, TinkerTool System, etc. actually writes to the drive it is extremely unlikely to do any harm, but that does not guarantee an out of date app will run under a newer OS than it was certified for.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/14/16 03:47 PM
Originally Posted By: joemikeb

Either a Unix command or an API (Applications Program Interface) used in TTP 6 is the most likely culprit. However Micromat NEVER condones using any version of TTP that has not been thoroughly vetted for the upgrade version of OS X you are running. Update versions are generally okay however.


Yes, that was certainly the case when I read all the discussions on Micromat's site when OS 10.11 initially came out, and also for about 10 days or so after OS 10.11 arrived. They even warned about using the beta versions of TTPro that were being developed/tested for El Capitan compatibility.

After the final version (8.0.3) of TTPro was released, though, I still waited to upgrade, as OS 10.11.1 arrived about 2 weeks later. All has been well since. (The other critical app that was updated for compatibility with OS 10.11 after the release was Onyx, and that of course was another reason why I waited).

From my perspective, it is not wise to try and use an older version of a program with each newer OS, unless it has been clearly demonstrated to be OK. One is just asking for trouble otherwise. About the only apps I've been able to use without upgrades (so far) are Quicken 2007 (works fine for my needs), and a calculator called Magic Number Machine (there are probably some others that I don't use very often which still work fine also, but the two I mentioned are ones I use on just about a daily basis).
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/14/16 10:50 PM
H, I will now have the "install El Capitan app in the application folders of all clones.

I'm pretty rusty on erasing a Mac HD, what happens at that point, you drag that file over from the clone, right from the finder from the clone to the newly erased Mac HD, and double click it and it will install the OS? The blank/ empty hardrive does not need any coding on it to deal with the new install?
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/15/16 03:06 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
H, I will now have the "install El Capitan app in the application folders of all clones.

I'm pretty rusty on erasing a Mac HD, what happens at that point, you drag that file over from the clone, right from the finder from the clone to the newly erased Mac HD, and double click it and it will install the OS? The blank/ empty hardrive does not need any coding on it to deal with the new install?


First of all, just confirm that the file name is "Install OS X El Capitan".

Secondly, as I mentioned above, you need to copy that file to another folder on both your internal drive, and on each clone. On the same hard drive/SDD, here is how to do that (after, of course, deciding exactly where you want the flle copied to:

"There are two ways to copy/paste, first is by selecting the file and using Command+C to copy, then Command+V to paste where you want the copy to be. The second is quicker and less-known—by using the mouse and the Option key. Normally, the default system behavior would just move a file that's dragged by the mouse (basically, cutting and pasting it), but holding down the Option key will cause it to make a copy of the file, just as though you had used the copy/paste functions in any normal app"

If you just drag the file to the new location on the same HDD/SDD, the file will disappear from the original location.

To copy a file between two different HDDs/SDDs, in that case you can just drag the file from the original location on the original HDD/SDD to the new location on the new HDD/SDD, and it will not disappear/be removed.

Going forward, when you use SD (or CCC for that matter) to perform the backup, either product will first erase the destination you choose whether the copy/clone will be made to, and then perform the backup. If instead you first use Disk Utility, it will also Erase everything on that destination, but will also re-format it. You can then use SD or CCC to perform the backup.

Obviously, everything in the destination location is gone, but being you have everything you want on the source location, the SD/CCC backup will copy everything for you exactly as is.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/15/16 04:14 PM
Yes, called install el capitan.

Did not understand probably 95% of your last post which is odd, as usually you are so clear.

The file is in the apps folder, and that gets cloned to the clone, hence what else to discuss? It'll be there on the clone.

I'm going to put it on a flash drive, as my laptop for some reason will not download it to the apps folder from the app store. In fact, I'm not even sure how I got it on the apps folder on the dektop. I've tried several times to download from app store to the app folder and nothing happens - laptop.

My question was:

After your MAC HD has fried, and you did your erase from clone, you then just ? Not clear how the erased Mac HD will get the install El Capitan onto it, as it has no structure.

BTW this just may be too convoluted a topic to convey via a forum.

Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/15/16 04:48 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Yes, called install el capitan.

Did not understand probably 95% of your last post which is odd, as usually you are so clear.

The file is in the apps folder, and that gets cloned to the clone, hence what else to discuss? It'll be there on the clone.

I'm going to put it on a flash drive, as my laptop for some reason will not download it to the apps folder from the app store. In fact, I'm not even sure how I got it on the apps folder on the dektop. I've tried several times to download from app store to the app folder and nothing happens - laptop.

My question was:

After your MAC HD has fried, and you did your erase from clone, you then just ? Not clear how the erased Mac HD will get the install El Capitan onto it, as it has no structure.

BTW this just may be too convoluted a topic to convey via a forum.



I have stated numerous times that if you start the "Install OS X El Capitan" file/process via that file's location in the Applications folder, it will go away/be deleted after that completes. Hence, you will not have that file any longer in that original location. It is still wise and prudent to make a copy of that file in another folder/location on your internal drive. As I have mentioned before, on my internal SSD for both of my machines, I have the file "Install OS X El Capitan" within both the Applications folder, and in another folder (separate from the Applications folder) called "Upgrades". And when I run SD, all of that gets EXACTLY copied to my external device (actually two devices, as I make 2 copies).

Now, as for:

"After your MAC HD has fried, and you did your erase from clone, you then just ? Not clear how the erased Mac HD will get the install El Capitan onto it, as it has no structure."

, if my HD (actually SSD in my case) gets "fried" beyond repair, the FIRST thing I will need to do is buy a new one and install it inside the machine (easy on my Mac MIni, and very, very difficult on my MacBook Air).

Next, once my internal SSD is "ok" (whether it was OK from the start (like both of mine are now), or via the installation of a new one), when one launches the file "Install OS X El Capitan", one of the choices is to run Disk Utility from there. That process will erase, format, and if necessary, partition, the internal HDD/SSD (SSD in my case). Once that is completed, I can then install a virgin, fresh version of OS 10.11.4. From there, I would boot my Mac from that fresh installation of OS 10.11.4 on my SSD, and then use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all needed "stuff" from my SD backup/clone (on my external device).

I can also run Disk Utility from the SD backup/clone, then launch the file "Install OS X El Capitan", and proceed as above. Of course, doing a fresh installation of OS 10.11.4 also gets the Recovery HD partition created.

Given that my SSD is fine now, I can either follow that process above, or after re-starting my Mac from the SD clone, I would do a "Restore all files" via the SD clone. What happens is 1) everything on my internal SSD is removed (but it is STILL formatted), and 2) everything (OS, Settings, Applications, etc., etc.) gets restored onto my internal SSD exactly like it was when I originally did the SD backup. Once completed, I just re-start my Mac from that just completed restore.

Regarding the method of first launching the "Install OS X El Capitan" for that I can first use Disk Utility, if I launch it from the Applications folder on the clone, it will be gone after the process completes, but I still have a copy of it somewhere else on the backup/clone. If I launch and run it from that alternate location, it WILL NOT get deleted after the installation completes.

Again, it's up to you whether you want it in one location on both your internal drive and on each backup/clone, or in multiple locations.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/15/16 08:57 PM
Originally Posted By: honestone
Going forward, when you use SD (or CCC for that matter) to perform the backup, either product will first erase the destination you choose whether the copy/clone will be made to, and then perform the backup.

I've never used SD and can't comment, but CCC does not "first erase the destination"; its default behavior is "Modified and deleted files will be cached as space allows on the destination."

Actually, CCC doesn't erase the destination under any circumstances.

Originally Posted By: Carbon Copy Cloner
When CCC copies files to the destination, it has to do something with files that already exist on the destination — files that are within the scope of the backup task, and items that aren't on the source at all. By default, CCC uses a feature called the SafetyNet to protect files and folders that fall into three categories:

Older versions of files that have been modified since a previous backup task
Files that have been deleted from the source since a previous backup task
Files and folders that are unique to the root level of the destination

....

When CCC's SafetyNet is disabled, older versions of modified files will be deleted once the updated replacement file has been successfully copied to the destination, and files that only exist on the destination will be deleted permanently.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/15/16 09:19 PM
Originally Posted By: honestone
Regarding the method of first launching the "Install OS X El Capitan" for that I can first use Disk Utility, if I launch it from the Applications folder on the clone, it will be gone after the process completes....

I just launched Install OS X El Capitan-10.11.3.app from /Apps and from a copy on another volume, and I couldn't find any way to get to Disk Utility; I thought you had to be booted into the installer to do that. (Does the installer actually disappear from /Apps if all you do is use DU, or only after you've done a complete installation?)
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/15/16 11:23 PM
Thanks, well Artie interesting, a lot of this is hard to follow..

"then launch the file "Install OS X El Capitan", and proceed as above".

What I"m asking is how does one launch a file from one hardrive onto another hardrive?

That's why I'm not sure the having the install El Capitan will work. You have a erased Mac HD that has no structure. How do you launch the OS onto it?

I just erased my old Mac HD, the old 27" I'm going to see. One of the instructions was to be on the wifi, which is in menu upper right. I think I was in recovery mode.

I'm only on SD now. I worry a bit about it not having that recovery drive, which is not a life and death thing, but it's a nice tool to have.

Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/16/16 04:31 AM
Originally Posted By: artie505
Originally Posted By: honestone
Going forward, when you use SD (or CCC for that matter) to perform the backup, either product will first erase the destination you choose whether the copy/clone will be made to, and then perform the backup.

I've never used SD and can't comment, but CCC does not "first erase the destination"; its default behavior is "Modified and deleted files will be cached as space allows on the destination."

Actually, CCC doesn't erase the destination under any circumstances.

Originally Posted By: Carbon Copy Cloner
When CCC copies files to the destination, it has to do something with files that already exist on the destination — files that are within the scope of the backup task, and items that aren't on the source at all. By default, CCC uses a feature called the SafetyNet to protect files and folders that fall into three categories:

Older versions of files that have been modified since a previous backup task
Files that have been deleted from the source since a previous backup task
Files and folders that are unique to the root level of the destination

....

When CCC's SafetyNet is disabled, older versions of modified files will be deleted once the updated replacement file has been successfully copied to the destination, and files that only exist on the destination will be deleted permanently.


Thanks for the correction about CCC. It looks like SD and CCC do things somewhat "differently". For SD, when one selects the "Backup - all files" option, there are 4 subsequent things to choose from:

1. Erase files, then copy files from "the source volume" (mine is called "Macintosh HD" on my Mac Mini, and "Macintosh SSD" on my Mac Book Air).
2. Smart update Backup from "the source volume".
3. Copy newer files from "the source volume" to Backup.
4. Copy different files from "the source volume" to Backup.

I always choose the first one, and it "erases the destination volume before writing to it".
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/16/16 04:43 AM
Originally Posted By: artie505
Originally Posted By: honestone
Regarding the method of first launching the "Install OS X El Capitan" for that I can first use Disk Utility, if I launch it from the Applications folder on the clone, it will be gone after the process completes....

I just launched Install OS X El Capitan-10.11.3.app from /Apps and from a copy on another volume, and I couldn't find any way to get to Disk Utility; I thought you had to be booted into the installer to do that. (Does the installer actually disappear from /Apps if all you do is use DU, or only after you've done a complete installation?)


Yes, you are correct (my snafu!). So, the process would be 1) after booting via the SD backup/clone, run Disk Utility from there to Erase, Format, and if necessary, partition the disk (typically the internal HD/SSD), 2) launch the file "Install OS X El Capitan" while still on the SD backup/clone and perform a "virgin" installation of OS 10.11.4 onto the just erased and formatted internal HD/SSD, 3) restart the Mac from that internal HD/SDD, and 4) use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the needed stuff from the SD backup/clone.

Again, note that via this process, the Recovery HD partition gets created.

I just did steps 1 through 3 from the SD backup/clone I made on Friday onto a Flash Drive, and it worked fine. (I did not do step 4, as 1) I was just running a test, and 2) the Flash Drive did not have enough room for the Migration step). But, the important thing is that it worked.

Now, doing a recovery/restore directly from ab SD backup/clone works well, but the Recovery HD partition does not get created. But again, as long as one has the "Install OS X El Capitan" file around, one can download and run the nifty software Recovery Partition Creator, available from here:

http://musings.silvertooth.us/2014/07/recovery-partition-creator-3-8/

This article talks about this gem in well-deserved words:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2602951/...-any-drive.html
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/16/16 06:52 PM
OK, I can now definitively answer artie505's and keys' questions. So, here goes.

First, after my test yesterday about installing OS 10.11.4 on an Erased, Mac-formatted flash drive, I booted from that flash drive on my mid 2013 MacBook Air. As I previously stated, that worked fine. However, doing that, for some "strange/unknown"reason, caused a start up or restart of the machine to take longer than usual. So, I decided to take care of this issue by doing the following about 2 hours ago:

1. Copied the Main Identity Folder for Office 2011 to an empty, Mac-formatted flash drive (will show why below).
2. Copied the "Install OS X El Capitan" file I downloaded yesterday to the Flash Drive.
3. Re-started the MacBook Air from the SuperDuper! backup/clone I had made just this past Friday.
4. Copied the "Install OS X El Capitan" file from the flash drive to 1) the Applications folder on the SD backup, and 2) the Upgrades folder for OS 10.11 I have on the SD Clone.
5. Launched Disk Utility from the Applications folder on the SD clone, and Erased and Formatted the Macintosh SSD partition on the internal SSD of the MacBook Air.
6. Launched the "Install OS X El Capitan" file from the Applications folder (on the SD Clone), and did a clean installation of OS 10.11.4 from that file to the Macintosh SSD on the MacBook Air.
7. After that installation completed, I was then able to do the migration of needed stuff from the SD clone to the Macintosh SSD partition, without needing to re-boot the MacBook Air, from that partition.
8. Finally, I re-started the MacBook Air from its internal Macintosh SSD partition, and it worked perfectly! And, now my MacBook Air starts (and re-starts) like "normal", ie, not taking long at all.
9. I then copied the Main Identity file for Office 2011 from the flash drive to the appropriate directory location on the Macintosh SSD partition. The primary purpose for doing that was to insure that my EMails (on the Air) were up to date. I did not need to back up any other file onto the flash drive.

Now, a couple of comments, both "in general" and specifically for the 2 individuals mentioned above:

1. For some reason, when I tried to use Disk Utility to Erase the Samsung 251 gig SSD in the MacBook Air (ie, the "top" level, with the subsequent (visible) partitions Macintosh SSD and eDrive), it would not let me do that. So, I just erased and formatted the Macintosh SSD partition. In a way, that saved me time in the end, as I did not need to re-create TechTool Pro's eDrive at the end of the process.

I guess if one needs to first install a brand new drive/SSD inside their machine, and boot from the SD backup/clone, Disk Utility would most likely allow one to start the Erase and Format process at that top level.

2. For artie505: I had previously read, on NUMEROUS occasions, and on numerous sites, that after launching the "Install OS X El Capitan" file from the Applications folder, and after the installation completed, that file would be gone. But, in this case, it did not. I'm wondering if that situation occurs when doing the installation on the same drive, but on different partitions? I've never done that. When OS 10.12 arrives, I plan on launching its "Install OS X" file from a location on my SD backup/clone, and in fact, I'll first place it inside that clone's Application folder.

2. For keys: this process did create the Recovery HD partition, as expected.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/16/16 07:13 PM
Well, shortly after I made this post, I saw where OS 10.11.5 and Itunes 12.4 were released:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/05/os-...sability-fixes/

I've downloaded the OS 10.11.5 Combo Updater, and plan on installing it later.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/16/16 09:22 PM
H, so one can install the OS from one drive (from clone) to another (the ust reformated Mac HD) ? How does that work?

How does one install software from one drive to another totally different drive? Hard to get my head around that.

Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/16/16 11:00 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
H, so one can install the OS from one drive (from clone) to another (the ust reformated Mac HD) ? How does that work?

How does one install software from one drive to another totally different drive? Hard to get my head around that.



It's been like that for quite a while. In fact, for me, it is the preferred way to do it. (By the way, what do you mean by "ust reformated Mac HD"? What is "ust"?
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 12:11 AM
What happens? You double click "install El Capitan from the clone, and it knows to install on the other drive - the just erased Mac HD?

Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 03:48 AM
Originally Posted By: kevs
What happens? You double click "install El Capitan from the clone, and it knows to install on the other drive - the just erased Mac HD?



No. After double clicking on it (and going through a couple of screens), the startup disk on your Mac shows up. But, there is a button entitled "More disks" that one would click, and it will show all drives attached to the Mac. So, IF you want to install it somewhere else besides your Mac's startup disk, you would select it.

But, in this case (given that one wants to install it on the Mac's startup drive), you can just continue with the installation. Real simple!
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 04:09 AM
Thanks that helps, I would never know or guess until that situation!

Then once you have the OS up, you go to migration tool, and pull everything from the clone or Time Machine....
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 09:56 AM
If you are installing a virgin OS on the drive (meaning that the drive was empty), Setup Assistant (equivalent to Migration Assistant) launches immediately when the drive boots. At that point, select either the clone or Time Machine and let it import everything. Don't set up any accounts before you do this. Setup Assistant will bring everything over to the new system and it will look just like the one being imported.

Read Set up your new Mac and If the Mac setup assistant says that your user account already exists, just in case. It's much easier to use SU than to set up new accounts and then use MA.
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 03:16 PM
Originally Posted By: jchuzi
If you are installing a virgin OS on the drive (meaning that the drive was empty), Setup Assistant (equivalent to Migration Assistant) launches immediately when the drive boots. At that point, select either the clone or Time Machine and let it import everything. Don't set up any accounts before you do this. Setup Assistant will bring everything over to the new system and it will look just like the one being imported.

Read Set up your new Mac and If the Mac setup assistant says that your user account already exists, just in case. It's much easier to use SU than to set up new accounts and then use MA.


Exactly. That same process also works for migrating/importing needed "stuff" from an SD (or, I suspect, a CCC) backup/clone.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 03:26 PM
Thanks Jon, yesterday, the set up came up and I think it was asking for Name etc, I quit, as I'm going to sell it. But migration then is easier, as it does not ask, you just migrate and don't have to deal with all that user stuff right?

The second link was confusing about starting a new account. Why would I have to do that? I want to keep my old info...
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 04:34 PM
The second link only applies if you have already set up an account and wanted to migrate from another computer, which is what you want to avoid if possible. Since you are going to sell, you did the right thing. The next owner should have a pristine OS.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/17/16 11:11 PM
Thanks Jon, you say avoid migration tool? I used it from new computer via old one and it went ok, except for the screwed up progress bar saying 50 hours to go when it was only a few.

An apple tech walked me through. We had migration assistant on both machines. Two machines, two monitors, but it would work with just one machine and an external hard drive?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 01:28 AM
I'm not saying that you should avoid Migration Assistant, just that it's easier to use Setup Assistant with a virgin OS because you won't be messing with accounts that are have been already set up. Either one works with one machine and an external hard drive.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 03:22 AM
Jon, isn't it the other way around, with migration, you have your account for 6 years, and you transfer it over without having to enter anything... no keystrokes for user name or password...?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 10:09 AM
Let's start over:

Setup Assistant launches the first time that you start a new Mac or when you have erased a drive and installed a brand new OS with no accounts or other settings. When you migrate from another computer or external drive into that new system, SA effectively clones everything so that the new system looks exactly like the one being imported.

If you have an existing system that already has accounts in it, Migration Assistant (which you can launch manually) imports all the accounts in the old system or external drive, but keeps the original account(s). This leads to having several accounts in the new system, which can cause problems if the original account and a new account have the same name. That's why it's easier to use SA (when possible) than MA.

I hope that this is clear.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 10:25 AM
Quote:
If you have an existing system that already has accounts in it, Migration Assistant (which you can launch manually) imports all the accounts in the old system or external drive, but keeps the original account(s). This leads to having several accounts in the new system, which can cause problems if the original account and a new account have the same name. That's why it's easier to use SA (when possible) than MA.

Gotta contradict that, Jon.
  • I justSet up my new MBP with Setup Assistant.
  • I named my new account with the exact same name that I used on my old MBP.
  • I ran Migration Assistant.
  • MA told me that it was migrating an account with the same name as an existing account...what did I want to do.
  • I hit "Replace".
  • Everything was copacetic.
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 01:31 PM
Thanks, Artie. I have never done it that way so I didn't know. Good info! smile
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 03:39 PM
Artie to confirm,
I'm going to remember what you recommend: don't clone back. Always erase and get a new OS.

But then after you do that you are then forced to use setup assistant? Pity you can't just go straight to migration assistant, there should be a check box, "use the same user name as before....?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 04:03 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Artie to confirm,
I'm going to remember what you recommend: don't clone back. Always erase and get a new OS.

But then after you do that you are then forced to use setup assistant? Pity you can't just go straight to migration assistant, there should be a check box, "use the same user name as before....?
Setup Assistant will do exactly what you want. It's basically the same as Migration Assistant except that it opens in a system that is not set up. After SA is finished, your system will be exactly the same as the one that you imported. I know; I've done it myself when migrating from one computer to a new one.

On the other hand, did you want two accounts that have the same name? Just clarifying.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 04:45 PM
No I always want one name, but in set up you then just put you old name and password, and then do migration assistant. And you can do this with one computer and your clone..?

I'm selling a computer, but am very rusty with a crisis situation, so good to know again..
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 04:59 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
Artie to confirm,
I'm going to remember what you recommend: don't clone back. Always erase and get a new OS.

But then after you do that you are then forced to use setup assistant? Pity you can't just go straight to migration assistant, there should be a check box, "use the same user name as before....?


The discussions about all this have been:

1. One wants to sell their machine.

2. One wants to restore their Mac from an SD clone.

3. One wants to first install a pristine version of the most recent OS that they had been using before, and then to get their information from a backup/clone.

For #1, assuming that the seller will not be supplying any additional software (besides what is contained within the Mac OS (Mail, Safari, etc.)), one would restart their Mac from their SD or CCC clone, run Disk Utility form there to Erase and Format the internal HD/SSD on the machine they are selling, then launch the file "Install OS X El Capitan" contained within the clone (you did remember to have that file), and install that OS onto the empty/formatted internal HD/SSD . When that completes, do nothing else. (One can do this "similarly" by launching the Mac they want to sell in "Target Disk Mode", but that is a little more involved).

For #2, after restarting one's Mac from the SD clone, run SuperDuper!, select "Restore all files", then select "Erase files, then copy files from "the source volume"", and then SD will do the restore. Once that completes, you'll wind up with what your Mac "looked" like (in terms of software, settings, etc.) at the point when you did the SD backup/clone. (artie505 did an excellent job above explaining the process via CCC).

For #3, one would restart their Mac from their SD or CCC clone, run Disk Utility form there to Erase and Format the internal HD/SSD on the machine they are selling, then launch the file "Install OS X El Capitan" contained within the clone (you did remember to have that file), and install that OS onto the empty/formatted internal HD/SSD . Now, here is where it gets a little confusing about the terminology. At this point (ie, while still booted into the clone), Migration Assistant will be presented (skip the "in between" stuff), and then select "From a Mac, Time Machine Backup, or start up disk". You'll then be presented with a screen for you to choose where you want your stuff "migrated"/copied from. One would logically select the device containing the applicable backup (I of course select the one containing the SD backup/clone). Once that process completes, you can re-boot your Mac, and all your account settings, preferences, etc. will be as they were before either 1) your most recent Time Machine backup, or 2) the most recent SD/CCC backup/clone you ran. This is exactly what I did the other day for my MacBook Air machine, via the SD backup/clone I made on Friday.

The differences between #2 and #3 are:

1. For #3, you first erased and formatted the internal HD/SSD on your machine. For #2 (via SD), you just erased it.

2. For #3, you will first have a fresh, pristine, "virgin" version on the OS, and then it will be "augmented" by the settings, etc. obtained via the restore from the Time Machine backup, or SD/CCC backup/clone.

For #3, after installing the OS, if one reboots their Mac, one will be then presented with Setup Assistant, so that one can setup their Mac (account name, password, etc.). Now if one wants to get their "stuff" from whatever backup they have via Migration Assistant, in order to not have issues with a different account (or even if one setup their Mac above with the same account name, etc., then follow what artie505 did above.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 05:10 PM
H,
I just did #3 yesterday, for selling, I did the erase, and I can't remember now how I got the OS on it. I think they asked me to be on internet.. can't remember now! I think they may just offer the OS online.. then set up assistant starts, and I quit to leave it in that state for the buyer.

Now for me in crisis: I do have that file on Clone, but I think that sounds kind of hairy using SD restore, if you are not familiar with doing that in crisis. I think finish set up assistant, put same user name as suggested, and then use migration tool, migrate from SD or TM is easier and more intuitive at that crises point...
Posted By: honestone Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 06:35 PM
Originally Posted By: kevs
H,
I just did #3 yesterday, for selling, I did the erase, and I can't remember now how I got the OS on it. I think they asked me to be on internet.. can't remember now! I think they may just offer the OS online.. then set up assistant starts, and I quit to leave it in that state for the buyer.


You are good to go.

Originally Posted By: kevs
Now for me in crisis: I do have that file on Clone, but I think that sounds kind of hairy using SD restore, if you are not familiar with doing that in crisis. I think finish set up assistant, put same user name as suggested, and then use migration tool, migrate from SD or TM is easier and more intuitive at that crises point...


Once again, you need to look at my two posts above:

1. $40498 - That is a blow-by-blow description of what I did the other day, and that addresses, in one respect, the "fear" you are expressing above.

2. #40545 - The one right above yours. That also addresses the "fear" you express.

I'll say it again: the quickest, easiest, and fastest way to get things going again is to do a restore from a SD/CCC backup/clone. That will not install a "fresh", pristine version of the most current Mac OS you have on your machine. But, it is seem less, easy to follow, and is proven to work (trust me, I have recovered that way a number of times, as have others, with either SD or CCC).

The primary reason I did it differently the other day (but again, doing EVERYTHING from the SD backup/clone), is because something got "hosed" on my MacBook Air when I was doing some testing last week directly related to this discussion, and I just decided to Erase and Format the Air's SSD, and install a pristine, fresh, and "virgin" OS 10.11.4, then used Migration Assistant on the clone to get all my "stuff" from the SD backup/clone.

When OS 10.12 comes out in the fall, after insuring that my 5 critical apps will work with the new OS, I will go with #3 that I described in my post #40545, but FROM the SD backup/clone. That is, I will of course first insure to have downloaded the file "Install OS X "whatever the name is for OS 10.12"", and again, do everything from the clone. I did EXACTLY that when I "moved"/upgraded for OS 10.10.5, the last one for Yosemite, to OS 10.11.1, the first "updated" version of OS 10.11, El Capitan (I previously explained why I first went to OS 10.11.1, instead of OS 10.11).

So, is that clear now?
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/18/16 10:00 PM
Originally Posted By: Jon
On the other hand, did you want two accounts that have the same name?

We discussed above that there's no need for two accounts with the same name to exist.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 03:06 AM
Boy after deciding to stay with Super Duper, and getting all that info here on how to get a recovery drive if need be in a crisis etc, a new twist just emerged today.

For the first time, I right clicked on my new external drive to take off site and encrypt, and the data partition encrypted fine, but the Mac OS partition said it would not encrypt because it does not have a recovery drive on it!

Message comes up:
"" A Recovery system for the targeted disk is required" and then wont encrypt.

Never seen this before is this new?

Also, Mac OS clone partition has a folder of data I'd like to encrypt, I don't care really about encrypting the system, but I don't think one can encrypt folders easily.
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 10:39 AM
You can encrypt a single folder. Read How to create a password-protected (encrypted) disk image
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 02:45 PM
Jon, that will be too much work to do every month, and I can't have that folder in a disc image on a regular basis. I just like the right click encrypt the drive, boom done. I heard there might be 3rd party app for that?

Darn, the SD not making a recovery drive has a new hitch!


For the first time, buying the new 27" I'm putting Data on the Mac HD, So in the past, I never did that. I always left the Mac HD pure so never saw this before. I can't make a spare drive for the data as I use it too much on a daily basis and cannot be encumbered.

Maybe there is a 3rd party app that can encrypt the drive quickly with the fast right click? Maybe that is the best solution, or consider bailing on SD for CCC. Though I like SD for a long time. It's off site, and the odds on anyone getting to it is rare.

Also have this idea: Maybe before taking it off site, and then again when bringing back, just move the data from the OS drive to the data drive. pita.




Posted By: grelber Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 04:01 PM
Man, this thread just goes on and on and on and .... tongue

Over past while it seems to have wholly strayed from the Subject, namely "Antivirus and copy conflict".

One might be tempted to refer to "flogging a dead horse", but the "dead horse" seems to be repeatedly resurrected ~ reincarnated as a different horse.

Bottom line: Should this thread be given a decent burial so that each newish issue can receive its own "blessing"?

Moderators: Please chime in.
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 04:19 PM
Greiber, good point, go ahead and close this out if you want. I just talked to SD directly about this, and we are good to go.. or I'll make a new thread on this tangent issue.

But really, anyone who comes on a thread to complain about a thread, has gotta be either retired or have a lot of time on their hands!
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 10:45 PM
With all due respect, kevs, your threads very often take multiple turns away from their original issues, because you continuously inject new issues that should really have their own threads into them, and it makes them reeeally difficult to follow and respond to.

And my being retired has nothing to do with this; your threads have been annoyingly difficult to follow and respond to for as long as you've been posting.

grelber's point is very well taken in this corner!

Edit:
Quote:
But really, anyone who comes on a thread to complain about a thread, has gotta be either retired or have a lot of time on their hands!

Or have an excellent reason! wink
Posted By: joemikeb Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/20/16 11:26 PM
Before this goes any further I am reminding everyone that casting personal aspersions is a violation of the FineTunedMac board rules and will NOT be tolerated. Enough said — okay?

I have asked the moderators of this forum to close this thread and/or break it up into multiple threads on the divergent topics. Closing the thread is easy but trying to break this puppy into separate included threads would be a LOT of work and very difficult as some posts would belong in multiple threads. In the meantime why does't everyone just drop it?
Posted By: kevs Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 02:27 AM
Artie, I was not referencing you at all in that statement.and I appreciate your help. It blows my mind when people, and you see this a lot on some forums, not here so much, when people complain about threads and and questions, and the OP etc.

I would never enter my brain ever to complain about anyone ever, if you don't like the thread, don't read the thread. It's amazing. I did not know you were retired, that is fine, I was not thinking of you at all when I wrote that.

Threads all the time move around and transmute, and get hijacked, and I would never care of get annoyed, but this has been actually a great thread with a lot of great info because of you and Joe and H, Tacit etc etc, and to see someone come on board and complain blows me away as I would never do that, but I guess everyone is different!
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 06:14 AM
I think you're looking at this from the wrong point of view, kevs.

This has been a fascinating thread with an awful lot of good and useful information in it (as any number of your threads have been), but when you post a question there's a whole bunch of people who look at it and maybe give it some thought before they respond or maybe don't even see it for a few days, and by then your thread has often taken several turns in direction, which makes following lines of thought and responding to them awfully difficult, even for those who've followed them from the get-go.

It's not a matter of ignoring threads you "don't like"; it's more a matter of not participating (or not fully participating*) in threads you "do like" because they've gotten too difficult to follow because of hijacking, and that affects the quality of the responses you get to your questions, because, for instance, responders to one may not even be aware of others to which they'd also respond.

I don't get a whole lot of exposure to other forums, but in my experience FTM is unique in the quality of its responders and responses; it's an educational rather than just a Q & A experience, and keeping threads one issue per thread makes for the best experience for all.

(I didn't take your post personally, kevs, but yeah, I plead guilty to being retired with too much time on my hands; retirement ain't all it's cracked up to be. frown )

* Truth be told, I stopped participating in this thread days ago, because it got too convoluted - to the point where you've even hijacked your own posts with multiple questions - for me to deal with.
Posted By: grelber Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 08:49 AM
At the risk of offending anyone's sensibilities by appearing contentious, my post (#40594) was per se demonstrably not an ad hominem argument — my explicit observation (complaint, if you will) was that the thread had meandered so far afield as to not have any relevance to its original subject matter.

From what I can gather, there is consensus at least on joemikeb's request to the moderators of the forum to close the thread. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 09:06 AM
Seeing as how I totally agreed with the thrust of your post I'm not sure why you directed that at me.

And as a matter of fact, I don't think anything particularly offensive has ever been said in this thread by anybody.

Personally, I'd like to see this thread broken up into its component parts. (I wonder how many there'd be?)
Posted By: grelber Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 09:16 AM
Originally Posted By: artie505
Seeing as how I totally agreed with the thrust of your post I'm not sure why you directed that at me.

There is absolutely nothing in my post which could be construed as being directed at you; it consisted of general observations.

If anything, it related to the debate between kevs and you, as encapsulated in kevs's comment:
"Artie, I was not referencing you at all in that statement.and I appreciate your help. It blows my mind when people, and you see this a lot on some forums, not here so much, when people complain about threads and and questions, and the OP etc.
"I would never enter my brain ever to complain about anyone ever, if you don't like the thread, don't read the thread. It's amazing."
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 09:31 AM
It was specific in its "ad hominem" reference, so it just seemed to me that it should have been pointed elsewhere.

Let's quit while we're ahead. wink
Posted By: grelber Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 09:44 AM
Originally Posted By: artie505
It was specific in its "ad hominem" reference, so it just seemed to me that it should have been pointed elsewhere.

No, it wasn't. I specifically stated that it was not to be interpreted as an ad hominem argument (and left names and references out of it).

We really need a separate forum or sub-forum for these little off-the-track excursions which detract from and are irrelevant to the original thread — ie, we need to "take it outside". I suppose the Lounge could be used for such, but it needs to be a place where combatants can duke it out safely (however that might be construed), without the fear of being banned from the forums altogether.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 09:50 AM
I meant that I thought your non-ad hominem reference should have been directed at joemike who found something posted by somebody or several somebodies offensive.

You're final paragraph is dangerous in its implications.
Posted By: grelber Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 10:24 AM
Originally Posted By: artie505
I meant that I thought your non-ad hominem reference should have been directed at joemike who found something posted by somebody or several somebodies offensive.

Never my intention. I agree with joemikeb.

Originally Posted By: artie505
[Your] final paragraph is dangerous in its implications.

Maybe yes, maybe no.
If anyone wants to continue the thought on that topic, it's long since time to move it to the Lounge (rather than retain it in this thread where it decidedly does not belong).
Posted By: cyn Re: Antivirus and copy conflict - 05/21/16 12:03 PM
Thread closed.
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