Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Peripherals Re-trying SuperDuper

joemike beat me to the punch, but although your pop-up will probably look different than his does, you should be able to follow his instructions.

But you ignored my BIG question: "With adapter?"

What adapter, and why do you need one?

I didn't see your post about an adapter. I need the adapter (which the SD card came with) because I am using that big slot next to the HDMI slot. The actual SD card is dinky. I showed you the screen shots today, and I saw nothing about about the GUID. I also saw nothing about "scheme" that Joe mentioned so I am stuck until I know what to do next.

First, I guess I know zilch about SD cards, so please post a link to the one you bought.

OK, I'm kinda working in the dark here because I don't know precisely what you're seeing on your screen.

In this Imgur image, #1 shows you which line to select...the very top line of the device with which you're working, #2 shows what I think you see when you hit "Erase," and #3 is what you should see after you've renamed your card, selected your Scheme and Format, and hit Erase in the pop-up. Note that you may have to select Format before you can select Scheme.

(joemike's screenshots probably look different than mine because of the Mac he's using.)

Let's see how that goes.

[quote=artie505]First, I guess I know zilch about SD cards, so please post a link to the one you bought.

SD card


Like I said after I clicked "erase" I never got the option to pick a Scheme or Format. I showed the screen shots.

I think Joe's version is so much newer than mine that it's very different.

I hate to put it quite like this, but your screenshots have got absolutely nothing to do with the project at hand: You show that you renamed your second line, NOT your first, selected you internal SSD, NOT your card, and partitioning is irrelevant to your task.)

Please follow my last set of instructions, working with the TOP line, as shown, and get back to us.

(OK, I guess the card itself is so flimsy that it needs a "carrier" to be able to work in the slot.)

She has a MICRO SD Card which is too small to fit into a standard SD card reader without a Micro SD Card to SD card adaptor. It has nothing to do with how sturdy or flimsy the card is, only the physical dimensions.

Thanks for the clarification.

So, pick the line that says Apple SD card above the the Catalina Back up, erase that and go from there? Disk Utility I couldn't tell by your screen shot or Joe's for sure. I'm about to give up because I'm feeling dumber and dumber.

Yup! The line that says "SD Card Reader."

Done. Thank you, Joe.

Is this what I should see on my desktop with the SD card in place?

SD icons on desktop

I ejected my Catalina icons in the Finder. Then those two SD card icons in my screen shot disappeared. I took my SD card out of my Mac and reinserted it, and now there is only one SD card icon showing for Catalina which makes more sense to me.

Dave at S/D told me that with an error I showed him (S/D failed to copy my SSD) that Given the error, though, you may have to re-do and erase-then-copy manually, then delete and recreate the schedule. You don't have a valid drive right now.... I'm not sure how to do, that but the next time I tried to erase and copy from my sd card it worked. For some reason the Smart Update wasn't working even though I had it selected. Turns out I had to delete the old SuperDuper and then all worked.

Anyway, this was harder than it should have been and I still don't know what he means. I don't think I have to do it though since I deleted the old S/D and downloaded the latest one. Crossing fingers it works next scheduled update tomorrow.

I understand your confusion, it all has to do with APFS and the structural changes in Catlina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, etc. and apparently how SuperDuper is handling the cloning process. I will attempt to explain all this without getting into the technical details where things get really baroque. In the following description I have provided links to Wikipedia articles providing more detail on each of the terms. Explore them if you wish, but feel free to ignore them.

In the simplest terms and at the highest level of abstraction or Virtualization in Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, etc., the boot drive is divided into multiple partitions and each of those partitions are subdivided into Volumes. When a drive mounts the actual entity that is opened is a Volume. MacOS is divided into two volumes...

1. The "system" volume where the actual operating system and built-in apps reside named Macintosh HD and the user only has Read access
2. The "Data" volume which the user has Read/Write access to and contains all of the user's data and settings as well as any installed Apps.

.
You are seeing two mounted volumes on the same physical SD card.¹

FOOTNOTES:

1. I am not sure what SuperDuper does/did as those two volumes should mount as a single volume group and normally are not be seen in Finder separately. (Admittedly, I have slept a few times since I ran Catalina and there could be versional difference.)
2. The actual physical and logical structures are hidden by macOS and what you are actually seeing is a carefully curated encrypted and sealed virtual system called APFS Snapshot com. (As they say in the myths, "But that is another story.”)

Thanks, Joe. You said: I will attempt to explain all this without getting into the technical details where things get really baroque. LOL! You did it anyway. You can't help yourself. I'm sure there is a more technical explanation but this was beyond me. Anyway, if you read the edited version of my post, after I ejected the two Catalinas, and removed the SD card and reinserted it, only one Catalina showed in Finder and on my Desktop!
Whew! I have SmartUpdate scheduled again for tomorrow. We will see what happens. I know I can change that to today to see what happens, but I don't want to deal with it today.

It has taken me years to fully apprehend the implications of logical and structural changes in macOS 11, 12, and 13, but I am confident that if we were face to face, and I could draw diagrams, show charts, talk with my hands, and deal with each point of incomprehension one at a time, I could explain it to you in a way you can understand. It is enough you are aware there is a significantly more complex structure under the hood which you may encounter from time to time but will only rarely be of any significant consequence and can generally be ignored.


I am also confident that you originally saw both volumes on the SD-card is an artifact of SuperDuper and unlikely to be seen again and in any case is safe to ignore.


Let us know what happens. Your friends at FineTunedMac want to know.