1. Little Snitch Kext
2. Remove Little Snitch Kext

item.181055

1. Remove backgrounds 100% automatically in 5 seconds with zero clicks There are approximately 20 million more interesting activities than removing backgrounds by hand. Thanks to remove.bg's clever AI, you can slash editing time - and have more fun!
2. Hi, I'm having what appears to be the same problem on a G5 dual 1.8 (early model) running 10.5.5. After running Applejack as 'applejack auto restart' the G5 repeatedly comes up with 'you must restart your computer' warnings when powered up. This G5 was upgraded from 10.4 and will have had little snitch 1 on it at some point.
3. Oct 03, 2017  Experience dedicated apps for music, TV, and podcasts, plus smart new features like Sidecar. Learn how to upgrade.

Jan 04, 2020  Little research has been conducted on the effectiveness of apple cider vinegar for skin tag removal. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a person can use liquid iodine to remove.

Matthew Griffin

How about using Sheepsaver on the iMac?

Run System 7 on the iMac, complete with floppy disk drive support.

item.181129

Pete Van der Goore

X Post Facto tried to do a floppy driver way back when, to allow the Beige G3 to use its floppy. Never did work.

item.181163

Michael Fussell

I have a Power Mac 7600 which I use for a variety of formats and devices including zip disks and floppy disks. It seems to me that getting an old 7600 or its nearest relatives is far easier and less costly than trying to make a more modern machine do ancient tasks. The 7600 has ethernet built in. However, you need an Ethernet 10/100 hub to convert the 10Mbit 7600 ethernet to 100Mbit compatibility. Many current ethernet hubs/switches will recognize 100Mbit but not 10Mbit.

There is a program from OWC that allows the 7600 to run OS9, and it works well for my old 7600. I find the 7600 to be a useful machine that I use infrequently to read old QuickTake and Kodak camera files, DiskDoubler files, and other items. I have mostly converted my archives onto my server with updated file formats, but probably not all.

item.181215

Ivan Drucker

A service for converting 5.25' floppies that I can personally recommend as a Mac consultant is RetroFloppy. They support a wide variety of formats, including from some pretty obscure formats like dedicated word processors.

Retrocomputing communities (such as for Apple II, Commodore 64, etc) might also be able to help. Some of these still maintain communications on Usenet or mailing lists.

item.181297

Martin Joseph

I am not sure why he is saying that about the built in ethernet on the 7600.. I have owned bunches of these (8500, 9500, 7500, Powercomputing, etc).

The built in ethernet is 10baseT, but it should, and does, auto negotiate with most things I have plugged it into.

If one is direct-connecting it, then a proper crossover cable is needed. In those days, the ethernet ports did not have the 'auto-crossover' feature that is near universal today.

Hope this helps

item.181307

Antonio Tejada

Michael Fussell wrote:

'[..] However, you need an Ethernet 10/100 hub to convert the 10Mbit 7600 ethernet to 100Mbit compatibility. Many current ethernet hubs/switches will recognize 100Mbit but not 10Mbit.'

Huh? I've never heard of, never mind seen, a 100Mbps or gigabit switch that doesn't support 10Mbps. Do you have an example?

(And of course actual hubs went the way of the dodo years ago.)

The only situation where I could see needing an old hub was if you had a computer with 10base2 (thin coax ethernet) and needed to bridge it to twisted pair.

item.181313

Kathryn Jenkins

Re:

'There is a program from OWC that allows the 7600 to run OS9, and it works well for my old 7600.'

You should be able to run 9.1 on a 7600 without the aid of OS 9 Helper, which to the best of my recollection was intended to allow you to run OS 9.2.x on older PowerPC Macs.

item.181260

John Klos

Harold Merklinger wrote:

'To the best of my knowledge, no Macintosh computer was ever equipped by Apple to read/write 5.25 inch disks. ..

By all meaningful measures, you're right, but there were these.

Michael Fussell wrote:

The 7600 has ethernet built in. However, you need an Ethernet 10/100 hub to convert the 10Mbit 7600 ethernet to 100Mbit compatibility. Many current ethernet hubs/switches will recognize 100Mbit but not 10Mbit.

I have never seen a switch that didn't negotiate to 10 Mbps. If you have one that exhibits this behavior, something is almost certainly broken.

If you're looking for a good way to get data off of floppy drives, any old PC with BSD would work. You can ignore the actual filesystem and copy the raw content to more permanent storage, then to a floppy emulator that works off of USB sticks, or to systems running emulations.

Also available is a USB floppy interface which will work with Mac OS X:

Another option is a Catweasel, but it requires a Windows or GNU/Linux system. If you have a lot of different formats, this is a more costly but more robust option.

Lastly is the Kryoflux, which is also a bit expensive but has direct OS X support.

item.181071

David Charlap

Todd Bangerter wrote:

'.. SCSI Zip Drive .. you'll need to get the Iomegaware drivers onto the SE somehow, and the SE will have to be running System 7.5 or later.'

I'm not sure of this. I know that on my PCs, these drives worked fine without any special software. They show up as generic removable media devices. The Iomega software is only required if you want to use their proprietary tools for things like write-protecting media.

My Power Mac G4 (with a built-in Zip-250) didn't use any Iomega-proprietary drivers, but Apple would have built-in the necessary software with the Mac OS X.

I never used one on an SE, so it might require a special driver, but it's been my experience that all you really need is some kind of generic SCSI driver extension. I used to use one called SCSI Probe (http://www.tucows.com/preview/207026/SCSI-Probe) to do this. Once installed, the SCSI Probe control panel can be used to scan/rescan the SCSI bus to detect and mount new devices (so you don't have to reboot after swaping media.) It's also a pretty good general-purpose SCSI diagnostic tool.

And an anonymous MacInTouch Reader wrote:

'the USB floppy drives don't read the old 720k or 400k floppies reliably. From what I've read, to get any floppies under 1.44MB you need to go back to the Beige G3 Power Macs, and the G3 PowerBook drives.'

They will read 720K disks. These are the DSDD disks used by PC floppy drives.

They will not read the 400K and 800K disks used by Apple's pre-DSHD format media. They require a variable-speed spindle, which PC floppy drive mechanisms (including all of the ones used in USB enclosures) do not have.

item.181398

MacInTouch Reader

First a historical note, re:

To the best of my knowledge, no Macintosh computer was ever equipped by Apple to read/write 5.25 inch disks.

As an Own-a-Mac salesman and Apple service tech in 1984, I went to Apple service school to get service training, and we did work on a Macintosh with a 5.25-inch drive! As some oldsters might remember, the Lisa had the 5.25-inch 'Twiggy' drives with double the number of read/write cutouts on the diskette sleeve, and the early Mac designs used that same diskette drive. Those prototypes were later used in the service program to show the techs how to discharge the CRT tube.

The design team's signatures on the inside of the case was a well-known feature of the original Mac models, but a careful examination of the metal frame that held the CRT, drives and motherboard of those first models also revealed a much larger opening for the floppy drive than was filled by the Sony 3.5-inch drive. The size of the floppy drive opening was meant to accommodate the Twiggy drives, as I found out at tech training.

So, yes, there were Macintosh computers fitted with 5.25 inch drives!

As to the data transfer, I would see if you could find one of the ATA interface boards that substitutes a memory card for a hard drive. There may still be some contortions needed to move from MFS/HFS disk format, but if the memory card is FAT-32 formatted, the data forks should still move over. Now I'd love to find a SCSI device that does memory cards..

And in the writing of this I realized next January is 30 years - I wonder what Apple is planning?

item.181423

Manny Veloso

Re:

'I have never seen a switch that didn't negotiate to 10 Mbps. If you have one that exhibits this behavior, something is almost certainly broken.'

I've seen lots of switches fail to auto-negotiate, even today. It's disturbing, but true - and these were brand new, out of the box, mostly modern stuff. Devices that run at 10T are few, far between, and most likely untested by the vendor, making them unlikely to work. To be honest, I doubt anyone except Cisco bothers to test this anymore; it's an added expense, for no real benefit. Why would you burn a port on your fancy GigE switch for a 10baseT device?

You can pick up 10baseT hubs on ebay, with a 100BT uplink. That's probably a much safer path than trying to figure out if your unmanaged switch can auto-negotiate with a really old device.

item.181467

Peter Lovell

Antonio Tejada wrote:

(And of course actual hubs went the way of the dodo years ago.)

It's unfortunate that no-one makes them now. They were great when you needed to watch network traffic to/from some machine without installing a local traffic-watcher on it.

item.181583

Antonio Tejada

Peter Lovell replied:

'It's unfortunate that no-one makes [ethernet hubs] now. They were great when you needed to watch network traffic to/from some machine without installing a local traffic-watcher on it.'

Perish the thought! That's terrible for network performance!

If you need to monitor all the traffic to a port, you can use a managed switch that can put a port in promiscuous mode.

item.181637

A Kaleberg

In 1982 Apple did ship original Macs with 5.25' floppy drives to various software vendors in hopes of having a variety of software available when the system was released. Somehow, we lost our boot floppy through the slot, but the NDA prohibited us from opening the box and extracting it, so we had to ship it back to Apple.

item.181702

Bruno Forcier

To answer Manny Veloso's question:

Why would you burn a port on your fancy GigE switch for a 10baseT device?

We actually do it often when we have to connect out-of-band management ports of particular equipment in a machine room to the administration VLAN.

A workaround I've found to work when we have non-cooperative 10Base-T devices that won't negotiate properly with a managed switch is to force the port on the switch side to be at 10Base-T Half Duplex. If this still fails, we'll deploy an unmanaged 100Mbit switch and uplink that one to the managed switch, either through its 100Base-T or 1000Base-T uplink port. This has always enabled us to talk to the device.

In regards to who still uses 10Base-T ports, I can name tape library manufacturers, as well as UPS manufacturers, amongst others.

item.181773

MacInTouch Reader

To the best of my knowledge, no Macintosh computer was ever equipped [and sold] by Apple to read/write 5.25 inch disks.

Apple never released any Macs with 5.25-inch drives to the public. After working in the Mac factory in Fremont, I can attest to this fact.

item.181780

Peter Lovell

Re:

'It's unfortunate that no-one makes [ethernet hubs] now. They were great when you needed to watch network traffic to/from some machine without installing a local traffic-watcher on it.'

Perish the thought! That's terrible for network performance!
If you need to monitor all the traffic to a port, you can use a managed switch that can put a port in promiscuous mode.

True, but for a mini-network in my office, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't hurt anyone else, and the corporate switch isolates my (temporarily) excessive traffic. I don't have the luxury of being able to convince the network admins to change the settings on their switch, so I have to roll my own solution.

The problem with using a managed switch is that they are much more expensive. I'm not into spending hundreds of dollars for one.

item.181797

David Charlap

Folklore.org has an interesting article about the Twiggy drives and the some of the shenanigans that were needed in order to get Apple to use the Sony 3.5' drive that shipped in the first-generation Macs.

item.181874

John Griffin

Just to conclude the discussion about 5.25' floppies in Apple computers, if you take a look at Google Images of the old Apple II family and/or refer to Wikipedia, you will find that the Apple Iic and IIe were both equipped with such drives. It wasn't until the IIc Plus that the 5.25' drive was replaced by the 'unfloppy floppy' 3.5' disk that Apple started supplying all their computers with the smaller disk.

In fact I had an Apple Ile with the 5.25' drive (a big step up for me from my old Vic 20!). Now I wish I had kept it as a reminder of the advanced state of technology back in the early '80's

item.182680

Father Vlasie

Question subject: Recovering directory (B-tree) structure for LAN deleted files

By accident I recently deleted the entire contents of a remote drive that I was accessing over our LAN. Most of the data were .eyetv files, which are themselves packages containing video streams, thumbnails, and metadata.

I discovered my error before any new data could be written to the drive. Of course, an inspection of the empty volume though its host computer revealed that there was nothing in the trash to recover (with the Finder's warnings I have always understood that, unlike local volumes, deleting data on a network-accessed volume is not 'undoable'; still, I have never understood why this has to be).

I am now trying to use utilities to recover all of the original data and directory info (i.e., the intact .eyetv packages). I have already spent a week running Data Rescue 3's 'Deleted File Scan' and 'Deep Scan' on the 3TB drive, with the same results: an extensive list of (presumably all) package contents and hard drive data, but without any indication of how to access or reassemble the original packages, let alone complete directory structure. As such, these recoveries are useless.

Does anyone know of another utility that will do the complete job, that is, restore all data and directory structure for my HD, returning it to its pre-[remote-]deletion state?

TIA for any suggestions!

item.183635

MacInTouch Reader

Jan 26, 2020  So Google Chrome has recently stopped playing nicely with Little Snitch, mainly because there is an issue with Chrome that it creates a temp file to check for updates every X hours. Since its making a new temp file for some reason it sets off Little Snitch, which is quite annoying. Chrome might already be running in the background on your computer. To see if Chrome's open and force quit, follow the steps below for your operating system. Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Click Task manager. Under 'Processes', look for 'Google Chrome' or 'chrome.exe'. Click it, then click End process. Press ⌘ + Option + Esc. Feb 11, 2018  Case Two: Google Chrome Keeps Freezing on Android/iPhone. In addition to computer users, Android and iPhone users are possible to be troubled by the problem that Google Chrome keeps not responding as well. Some have reported that Google Chrome freezes after.

RE: Father Vlasie's data recovery questions

What filesystem is the original drive? If it is HFS+, I've used both Data Rescue and R-studio with some success, but in general, recovering b-tree structure is difficult at best, unless Data Rescue just picks it up automatically. I talk to Drive Savers fairly regularly and asked them if/how they do it, and they said sometimes it isn't possible.

If the filesystem was originally not HFS+, you should try a recovery program for that file system. (R-studio, Get Data Back, iCare Recovery, etc., etc.).

item.183640

Scott Bayes

Father Vlasie writes that he's trying to reassemble files accidentally deleted on a server, mostly .eyetv files.

Depending on your needs, just recovering the .mpg (or whatever suffix) files from the .eyetv packages may be enough. In my case, I immediately transcode my .eyetv captures to efficient .mp4/h.264 format using HandBrake, and the only part of the package that's useful to me is the Title, which I would manually restore after previewing the video to see what it is.

If you are using the EyeTV library mechanism, this would not really be enough (but boy, those mpgs are BIG, which is why I use Handbrake on them, and manage the library myself), but I don't really know the final disposition of your video.

If I import the raw mpg using EyeTV's File > Open Quicktime Movie.., EyeTV can't seem to do anything with them but let you watch, unfortunately; seems to be no way to reconstruct the original pkg.

BTW, in the case of captures with my EyeTV HD, the .mpg files seem slightly mutant, so Quicktime won't handle them. With HandBrake, however, I can just drop the .mpg or .eyetv file on it to convert. VLC can also open these mpgs.

item.187576

Michael Schmitt

I just got my MacBook Pro back from the Apple repair depot. The repair was to replace the battery (due to 'battery needs service' error) and the logic board (intermittent dead ports).

Note that there was nothing wrong with the disk drive or its contents. But per the repair depot's standard practice, they wiped the drive and reinstalled OS X.

Fortunately, I have many backups, including a full volume clone made the night before I took the computer in. Easy restore, right? Not so fast!

Resources available:
- MacBook Pro with fresh OS X back from Apple. It was running Mountain Lion before this.
- Up-to-date Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule.
- Multiple SuperDuper! backups, including a fresh one. The backups are on the Time Capsule.
- A new iMac, running Mavericks.
- Bootable backup of the iMac.
- Another bootable backup, running Snow Leopard.
- Bootable backup running Leopard or earlier.
Notice that what is not listed is a bootable backup running Mountain Lion. I do have the SuperDuper clone, but since it is on a Time Capsule network-attached drive, it is in a disk image.

The first problem is that when the repair depot reformats and reinstalls OS X, they use the version that was originally installed on the machine. In this case, that is Snow Leopard.

The OS X Recovery (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718) partition was introduced in OS X Lion. So, in erasing the hard drive partitions, they also wiped out the hidden Recovery HD.

SuperDuper clones volumes, not drives, so it won't restore the Recovery HD. How do we get it back?

Apple now provides a Recovery Disk Assistant (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4848), but it works by copying the recovery partition from the machine you're booted on. Most notably, it can't copy the recovery partition from a downloaded Mountain Lion installer.

The only boot device I have with a recovery partition is the iMac running Mavericks. I don't know if it would be OK to put a Mavericks recovery partition on a Mountain Lion machine, but it is a moot point: Apple says that if your source for the Recovery Disk Assistant is a machine that has never been upgraded, then the resulting external recovery partition can only be used to recover that machine.

So, the Apple way to get the recovery partition back is to install OS X again, using the App Store download - even though this is a waste of time, since the plan is to restore the main volume from the clone anyway.

Unfortunately I wiped Snow Leopard off of the MacBook Pro drive before realizing this. Now I need some way to reinstall Mountain Lion on it, even though I can't boot it.

I have a Thunderbolt cable, so the new plan is to use Thunderbolt target disk mode (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10725) to attach the MacBook Pro internal drive to the iMac, and run the Mountain Lion installer, choosing to install it to the Thunderbolt-attached drive.

Nope. For no good reason, the Mountain Lion installer (both the downloaded .app and the actual installer in the install disk image) has an edit: It will not permit the Mountain Lion installer to run on the Mavericks iMac, probably because you're not allowed to downgrade below what the computer originally shipped with. Unfortunately, it applies this check immediately upon launch of the installer; they don't allow for the possibility that you are trying to install to a different machine's internal or external drive.

This severely constrains the methods available for reinstalling to a bare drive. You have to have something else you can boot that is the same OS X version (or a little less) than the installer.

Ultimate solution:
1. Boot MacBook Pro using the Snow Leopard bootable external drive.
2. Run the Mountain Lion install (which happened to be downloaded already to that drive), choosing to install to the MacBook Pro internal drive.
3. After the install is complete, the recovery partition is back.

Now the next problem: cloning the Mountain Lion backup back to the MacBook Pro.
Since I don't have a bootable Mountain Lion drive, the plan was to run SuperDuper while booted from the same Snow Leopard drive as used to solve the previous problem.
This failed as soon as it hit the VLC application, because of how the code signature is stored as an extended attribute.
The rule to be followed is: Never use SuperDuper while booted from an earlier OS X version than the one you're trying to clone -- even if there have been no changes to the underlying HFS+ file system.
So, running SuperDuper on Snow Leopard couldn't restore a Mountain Lion clone, because it hit an extended attribute that was too large to copy.
Ultimate solution:
Now's the time to put the Thunderbolt target disk mode solution back into play. I used it to attach the MacBook Pro internal drive to the iMac, and then ran SuperDuper on it (under Mavericks), to restore the Mountain Lion clone back to the MacBook Pro.
It did pop up a weird error, that the Little Snitch kext was not supported on the machine. I think what happened is when OS X saw that the kernel extensions were being updated on the attached disk, it tried to rebuild the kernel extension cache on that disk. The Little Snitch version on the MacBook Pro clone was an older version, so it was complaining that it wasn't compatible with Mavericks.

Lesson Learned:
It isn't enough to have many backups. If you are going to take a computer in for service, do whatever it takes to create a bootable clone of that computer.

Or at the very least, have a bootable clone of the same version of OS X.

Little Snitch Kext

item.187680

Jennifer Cluse

A recent post regarding using a dual-OS external hard drive is an excellent idea, but I suggest that it can be improved on.
Some years back I had a spare 320GB 2.5' and established that it is possible to split any Mac OS volume into 16 (max) partitions, which I did, This gives partiton sizes more than big enough for any OS to be installed into, especially now that archival PowerPC code has been removed.

My 'All OSs' tool starts at 10.4.11 (but that is near useless; ATA drives were the go then), 10.5.8, numerous versions on 10,6, & so on.

Or, as I prefer to say in-house, Systems 14,11, 15.8, now 16.3-16.8 v1.1, (many version to suit many Macs,) 17.0 (basically ignored), 18,0 plus the current combined updater, and System 19.0, also with current updater. This gives you the added luxury of many spare partitons, which are in effect very large, very fast, very cheap USB temporary transfer & storage devices.

The only way to improve on this is to find an old, smaller HD, one that draws less than half an amp, so that it can be serviced with a single USB connection. You wouldn't have as many partitions of the 20GB size that a 320GB HD can provide, but 20GB is much larger than is needed. IIRC HDs about 250GB drew less than 500mA/0.5A. I *must* have one somewhere . . . . :~?

With the Sys18 & 19 partitions, as well as having the system installed so as to be able to boot a MacBox from it, each partion also has the extracted base installers available. There is more than enough room on each partition to include each incremental updater, to deal with touchy Macs.

This OS-tool has recently been called into play by myself. My maxed-out early-2011 MacBook Pro 8,2, the last to be able to boot into Syst 16, and hoped for to last for the next ten years, when I'll be 83, has died. Before me! Utterly. My first Mac to do so. Not happy. But that is another post.

item.187610

Joe Toth

Michael Schmitt wrote:

'If you are going to take a computer in for service, do whatever it takes to create a bootable clone of that computer.'

That's the ideal method, but not the only one. You can reinstall the appropriate operating system and use Migration Assistant to copy your apps and files from Time Machine or from one of the other backups, including a mounted disk image.

item.187611

Jordan Orlando

It's been a while since I've been in this situation, so I may be remembering it wrong.. but doesn't Apple offer a downloadable application that will make any USB key into a bootable install drive?

I found this discussion on Apple's Support site:

item.187612

Sondjata Olatunji

Re: Michael Schmitt's MacBook restore:

I'm wondering why Michael didn't boot the MacBook Pro in target disk mode to the iMac and run SuperDuper on the iMac and restore the disk image of the MacBook Mountain Lion install from the Time Capsule to the MacBook Pro's hard drive.

And if the disk image on the Time Capsule had been prepared for ASR [Apple Software Restore], he could have used Disk Utility to do the same thing.

Similarly he could have booted the MacBook Pro via the iMac with Mavericks installed and run SuperDuper (or CCC) on that hardware to restore to the MacBook Pro internal disk.

Was there a problem getting the disk image from off the Time Capsule? I don't have one, so I don't know.

item.187615

Michael Fryd

Michael Schmitt wrote about his difficulties in restoring Mountain Lion to a MacBook Pro that was running Snow Leopard.

There are a number of ways of handling this. Many are easy. The real issue is that Apple does not make it easy to find instructions. Apple really wants you running the latest OS.

In particular, Apple does not make it clear how to install a recovery partition when you don't have an existing one to clone. The answer is: you reinstall OS X, and the installer handles creating the appropriate recovery partition for you.

As to Mr. Schmitt's specific situation, perhaps the most straightforward method would have been:

1. Boot up the MacBook Pro in Snow Leopard
2. Open the App Store and find 'Mountain Lion' under 'previous purchases'
3. Click install (This should update his MacBook to Mountain Lion and install the appropriate recovery partition)
4. Boot from the recovery partition and restore from his Time Machine backup.

Another option is to mount the MacBook in target disk mode to his iMac. He can then use SuperDuper to wipe and restore the MacBook Pro drive from the SuperDuper copy on his Time Capsule. This gets him his MacBook Pro back, but without a recovery partition. To install a Mountain Lion recovery partition, just reinstall Mountain Lion from the App Store. The installer will notice the lack of a recovery partition and create one.

Things would be much easier if Apple made available a separate Recovery partition installer. As it is, the only supported way of installing a Recovery partition is to reinstall OS X.

item.187618

MacInTouch Reader

Michael Schmitt describes an incredibly arduous hard drive restore problem, following an Apple (in-warranty, I suppose) repair.

He described the difficulties encountered without either a bootable backup of the disk, or of a bootable installer for Mountain Lion.

To prevent the first problem, I have had terrific success using Carbon Copy Cloner bootable backups. (I have never tried either SuperDuper or Apple's Time Machine.)

For the second, it turns out that the Mountain Lion Installer obtained through the App Store makes use of a bootable disk-image contained in the Installer file package.

Macworld and others have reported a reasonably simple method to find and extract that disk image, and then burn it to DVD. The technique was first developed for the Lion Installer. It may also work with the Mavericks Installer.

item.187626

Colleen Thompson

Re Michael Schmitt's epic.

Seems unnecessarily complicated. There's a lot to parse here, and maybe I missed something, but once Mountain Lion was installed on the MacBook Pro, why not use Migration Assistant to restore from the Time Capsule backup?

Also, does Carbon Copy Cloner have the same issue with extended attributes as SuperDuper?

At any rate, glad you got it sorted out!

item.187635

Samuel Herschbein

Re: Michael Schmitt's restore woes:

This setup has been a lifesaver for me:
a 2.5' FireWire/USB external drive with bootable Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion partitions, and Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion install partitions. I keep a bunch of 3rd party utilities on the bootable partitions, e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner, SMART Utility, DiskWarrior, et al.

With this one drive I can diagnose/repair most disk issues, do backups/restores using Carbon Copy Cloner and Disk Utility, and do clean installs.

item.187651

John Lockwood

Re: Michael Schmitt's problems getting his Mac restored:

It is possible to make an installer package that, when run, will install a Recovery partition on to a selected drive. This could be to add one, if one does not exist, or to update, or even downgrade, the version of Recovery partition. I personally use it to update the Recovery partition.

See::

It is also possible to make a bootable partition or memory stick that contains a full OS installer and which does not need to download the OS (unlike the recovery partition). This is done using Lion Disk Maker. See:

In this case, the best option would be to keep a set of Recovery Partition installers - I have 10.7.5, 10.8.5 and Mavericks ones. I can run these from any OS version to install any desired Recovery partition version on any suitable drive. They are less than 500MB each in size.

item.187661

Paul Ukena

Samuel Hirschbein's 'lifesaver' should be a standard toolkit for any Mac freelance technician. When I was in that racket full-time, I labeled my similar disk 'Toolbox.'

These drives are trivially small (especially compared to what we had to carry around in the SCSI days - I was able to go from carrying around a wheeled carry-on to a lightweight backpack), and so my partners and I usually carried a few of them, with boot and install partitions for OSes several iterations back. It helped to have some redundancy, since it occasionally happened that one of these drives failed (they were all backed up at the office).

It takes time and know-how to set up a drive like this, and a skill-set beyond most users' abilities (excepting, of course, most of the knowledgable folks who frequent MacInTouch). Perhaps this could be a marketing opportunity for someone: sell pre-configured diagnostic drives. On second thought, the licensing issues would probably be overwhelming..

item.187671

Michael Schmitt

There are many possible solutions. I was describing what I experienced so others may learn from my mistakes. And to (passive aggressively) express my annoyance that the Apple Store repair depot felt it necessary to wipe my drive.

Once Mountain Lion was installed on the MacBook Pro, why not use Migration Assistant to restore from the Time Capsule backup?

The Time Machine backup is not as complete as the SuperDuper! clone, because:
1. I have some folders excluded.
2. Time Machine backups have built-in system exclusions.
3. I don't trust Time Machine for a full restore. Especially under Mountain Lion, due to the bug where a Time Machine backup can be missing large parts of the system, including all Applications. (Hint: if you are using Sophos Anti-Virus on Mountain Lion, upgrade to version 9 ASAP!)

Does Carbon Copy Cloner have the same issue with extended attributes as SuperDuper

Probably not if doing a block level backup and restore.

Note that I only had a problem with SuperDuper! because I was running it on Snow Leopard that time.

The Mountain Lion Installer obtained through the App Store makes use of a bootable disk-image contained in the Installer file package. Macworld and others have reported a reasonably simple method to find and extract that disk image, and then burn it to DVD.

I do create bootable DVDs of the App Store downloaded OS X installers, which I could have resorted to, but booting from the DVD is slow. (Putting the installer image on a USB flash drive (or SD card) would be faster.)

I'm wondering why Michael didn't boot the MacBook Pro in target disk mode to the iMac and run SuperDuper on the iMac and restore the disk image of the MacBook Mountain Lion install from the Time Capsule to the MacBook Pro's hard drive. [..] Similarly he could have booted the MacBook Pro via the iMac with Mavericks installed and run SuperDuper (or CCC) on that hardware to restore to the MacBook Pro internal disk.

I did do the first suggestion.

The second suggestion would have worked but would have messed up the iMac drive a bit, because it would think I have a new computer. Not to mention I'd lose the use of the iMac for hours.

Perhaps the most straightforward method would have been:
1. Boot up the MacBook Pro in Snow Leopard
2. Open the App Store and find 'Mountain Lion' under 'previous purchases'
3. Click install (This should update his MacBook to Mountain Lion and install the appropriate recovery partition)

True, but I started out by erasing the store-installed Snow Leopard, before I realized I was missing the Recovery HD partition.

Another option to get Mountain Lion back would be Internet Recovery.

That would be slow, but I think I didn't actually need to do the full installation. I could have watched the install log and kill it after it completes the partitioning and installation of the recovery HD image.

Another option is to mount the MacBook in target disk mode to his iMac. He can then use SuperDuper to wipe and restore the MacBook Pro drive from the SuperDuper copy on his Time Capsule. This gets him his MacBook Pro back, but without a recovery partition. To install a Mountain Lion recovery partition, just reinstall Mountain Lion from the App Store. The installer will notice the lack of a recovery partition and create one.

I saw that solution on the web, but didn't want to reinstall Mountain Lion after the full volume restoration -- I thought it would be safer to restore the same files that I backed up.

Things would be much easier if Apple made available a separate Recovery partition installer.

Yes!

Or build it in as an option to the OS X installer: create/update/repair the Recovery HD partition without reinstalling OS X.

One thing I realize now is that it would be a good idea to use Apple's Recover Disk Assistant to created a recovery partition on the bootable clones, just in case.

item.187682

Brian S

Michael Fryd wrote about recovery partitions

'..Apple does not make it clear how to install a recovery partition when you don't have an existing one to clone.'

Even when a recovery partition is available, there can be issues (as pointed out before in prior posts on this topic).

FWIW: There are manual methods to clone recovery partitions that don't require SuperDuper (SD) or Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). Even though CCC will clone the recovery volume automatically, SD will (AFAIK) not, and it is my cloning tool. Since I didn't want to purchase CCC just to clone a recovery volume to my new SSD, I found some manual instructions here:

'Manually Cloning a Recovery Partition'

that worked fine. I recommend reading and understanding the instructions before using them.

item.188291

Gene L

I have a problem I've never faced before and I am stumped at how to tackle it.
My backup procedure for my older Macs is to create a bootable external drive, boot to it and use Disk Utility to create a full disk image on the external drive.
I also kept the external drive at Snow Leopard 10.6.8, so I could boot to it for the rare need to run an app.
The problem came when I decided to apply the latest security update for Snow Leopard. The update trashed the OS on the external drive, showing many error messages for Apple kext's and endlessly loops with 'waiting for root drive'

Running Disk Utility says the disk is ok. I can read and write to it when used as a plain external drive. But I don't know how to diagnose the problem or repair it. Since it's external, safe boot won't help. I tried rerunning the 10.6.8 combo update, but it says the drive is not eligible. The security update wants to update the boot device, which is Mavericks. Since I can't boot to the external, I can't look at the logs to find the problem.

I tried copying system files from a working 10.6.8 machine by date, but there were far too many and impossible to find all of them because Snow Leopard does not update the modified date on folders when files contained are modified.

I am extremely reluctant to wipe the disk. This is the backup for several laptops at 3TB. I wouldn't mind reverting to 10.6, as long as it didn't wipe the data. Are there any system files I can trash to allow me to reinstall 10.6 and update from there?

Help! I'm stuck.

item.188553

Bruce De Benedictis

I believe that the answer to Gene L's problem is to move all the backup files to a separate area on the disk, and then remove everything else from the disk. Then he should be able to reinstall 10.6 and do the updates safely.

However, his basic backup plan is not a good one. At the very least, there should be a separate partition for 10.6.8. The backups should be on a different partition, or better yet, on a different disk. This will avoid permissions problems, as well as reucing the chance that system problems would corrupt backup files.

I had a system file on a backup disk once, but it was more trouble than it was worth. I have accumulated more disks, and now I keep them separate. I have one disk with 10.6.8 on one partition, and 10.9.2 on another, with the newest utilities. If I need an old file that I have no other conversion method, I can boot a computer to 10.6.8 and retrieve it. If I have a disk problem, I can boot to 10.9.2 and use a utility. I also saved the Mavericks installer to this disk, so I do not need to download it again, which saves time.

item.188572

Tracy Valleau

I just went thru an email exchange with Alsoft support regarding an 'out of memory' error I got when trying to run DiskWarrior on my boot drive. My drive is a 1TB, with 600GB eaten up by some 4 million files. I have 32 GB of RAM.

I must be right on the cusp, since I was actually running DW against two Carbon Copy Cloner clones in removable trays. Interestingly, one was successfully handled by DW, but the other quit in pass 7, with the out of memory error.

I suspected that it was the fact that DW is 32-bit, and Alsoft tech support confirmed that:

Due to the size of the directory in relation to the amount of RAM available to DiskWarrior, you will not be able to run the current version of DiskWarrior as maintenance on this drive.

Were the volume to become inaccessible, we could likely recover the data through additional assistance from Technical Support.

DiskWarrior is currently a 32bit application - which can use up to 4GB of RAM.

While, I'm just in Technical Support, and don't know the plans of future software, I would imagine that since the operating system can now support 64bit architecture, that the developers will work toward a 64bit version of DiskWarrior which will allow the usage of more memory and the capability to repair this drive.

It's this last I find a bit disingenuous, since OSX has supported 64-bit since 2009 (10.6: 64-bit app; 64-bit Cocoa and 64-bit UNIX; 64-bit kernel). Alsoft has had 5 years to get with the program and has failed to do so.

For others in this situation, Drive Genius and Tech Tool Pro 7 are both 64-bit apps, and there are likely others that can reconstruct a directory as well.

item.188588

Samuel Herschbein

Re: booting external in Safe Mode:

Hold down the option key at startup to get the list of drives. After they appear, click the arrow below a drive and immediately hold down the shift key. You should boot into Safe Mode.

item.188654

Errol Kaufman

I'm running Disk Warrior (v4.4) on a 32GB iMac 1TB (non-Fusion). To those who say it's only a 'one trick pony' I'd like to add that it's a Clydesdale! Works just fine on my machine and has saved my butt more than once. Nothing wrong with an application that does just one thing..and does it well.

item.188660

Colleen Thompson

Gene L. got tangled up somehow.

Since it's external, safe boot won't help.

Samuel H told you about the option key boot. You could also set the external to be the boot drive in System Preferences/Startup Disk; then Safe Boot, and perhaps also the combo updater, will apply to it.

Since I can't boot to the external, I can't look at the logs to find the problem.

Sure you can. You just need to find the folder where those logs are stored. I can't remember where it is offhand, but a little googling should get you there.

I tried copying system files from a working 10.6.8 machine by date, but there were far too many and impossible to find all of them, because Snow Leopard does not update the modified date on folders when files contained are modified.

Modification date problems aside, this will never work, because OS X has so many invisible files. You can never make Finder copies work. Permissions also are a complication when doing this.

item.189577

Fred Kotler

I am trying to help a relative resolve an external hard drive issue. The external drive was set up with three partitions: Clone (for a SuperDuper clone), TimeMachine, and Data. The external is partitioned as GUID and all volumes were set up as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). All has been OK for months. But today, the Data volume is not mounting, nor is it seen in Disk Utility or DiskWarrior. Looking at the partition map in Disk Utility shows the space where Data used to be but it is grayed out. I tried repairing the disk with Disk Utility but it reported no errors. Does anyone have any suggestions for recovering the Data volume? There was no information stored on it, so loss of data is not an issue, but I would rather not repartition the drive and lose the TimeMachine backup.

item.189636

MacInTouch Reader

Re. Fred Kotler's problem:

Start Terminal

cd /Volumes
ls

Is there anything that looks like the Data partition?

I've had the internal disk on Macs partitioned for years, and occasionally one partition has not mounted after a restart. It's always been recognisable in /Volumes as 'disk name 1'.

item.189659

Mark James [SoftRAID]

Here is a (free) solution using SoftRAID; chances are, SoftRAID can manage the partition map better than Disk Utility.
Download SoftRAID (It runs as a 30 day trial)
You will need to 'update' the driver and restart.
this is not a boot disk, so select the disk and 'Convert to SoftRAID format'
SoftRAID should show the three volumes/partitions on the disk.
Delete the volume in question.
Create a new volume.
When done, 'convert to Apple format'.

This should fix everything without affecting your Time Machine backup and data on the other volumes.

When done, use the Utility menu and 'uninstall SoftRAID' from your boot disk.

If SoftRAID does not see all three volumes, send a tech support file to support@softraid.com. We may be able to help on that.

item.189663

Harold Zeh

Fred Kotler asked how to mount a partition that will not mount and to do it in a way another partition (TimeMachine volume) on the same disk will be unaffected.

My first step would be to attach the disk to a different Mac. I have had volumes mount on one machine that refuse to on another. I have no idea why, but they just did. If it mounts, run Disk Warrior on it.

If that does not work, try something a bit more robust than Disk Utility - like TechTool Pro.

If that does not work (and even if it does ;-)), make a clone of the still mounting TimeMachine volume to a single disk and use it, instead, going forward. It is not a good idea (in my opinion) to comingle clones, Time Machines and supplimental data storage on one disk.

One wonky partion could be a sign of (or cause) more problems to come - or not. But, once you have a copy of the TimeMachine (and the clone partition on a separate disk of it also), the disk with the problem partition can be erased and partitioned as before. Again, not something I would do to use as the only, or primary, backup. However, it could be used to keep additional cloned volumes of the primary single disk backups (clone, data, and Time Machine.)

I use four (separate disks - and a fifth monthly offsite) clones in rotation and have never totally trusted Time Machine, although I use it and from time to time wipe it to start over. A day or three is all I hope to get from it - not as a need, but more of a convenience to get an older version of a file quickly (hardly ever.)

I would describe most folks' use of computers/data storage as reckless. That includes my wife and son, who on their own would have zero backup of anything. Just because I have data that is crucial to my business and would be devastating to lose, someone using a computer for strictly personal/entertainment uses would be devasted to lose video, music and pictures, etc. of children, relatives and friends.

Last time I was at the local Apple Store, I happened to be near the Genius bar, where a typical (reckless) family was picking up their 2010 iMac 27'. The genius plugged it in to show them it still had the question mark upon startup that it came in with, but could be fixed for a price - replace hard drive. Little Jonny asked about all the 'stuff.' Genius said to use a backup or Time Machine to restore it once they get it home. Otherwise it was gone. Disk was toast. Family was visibly in shock.

item.189671

Robert Ostmann

DiskWarrior is where I would start.

item.189688

Robert Howells

Fred Kotler gives no clues as to how old the external drive is or what Mac it has been working with !

So I wonder if it is an old Mac/old drive that had the 128GB limit on drive size?
It was possible to use larger size hard drives on those Macs by using a Speed Tools hd driver with associated software on the Mac to read that volume!
Lose the software on the Mac, and the separate volume above 128gb was not readable = did not exist !

Just a thought!

item.189986

Ric Alonso

I have a Mac Pro with 4 internal drives. Two of the drives are configured as a 4TB mirrored RAID. A few days ago the RAID stopped appearing in the Finder. The other drives are visible.

The RAID drive is mounted according to Disk Utility. It is also verified. I restored Mountain Lion without result. I upgraded to Mavericks without result.

I found a workaround by setting Finder preferences to open a new window as the RAID. When I do this, I have access to the contents of the RAID The RAID icon in the sidebar is visible but grayed out. I do not have access to the RAID from within an application.

I know I can copy the contents and recreate the RAID. I'm hoping there's an easier fix, as I don't currently have a free 4TB drive hanging around.

I have searched the web but haven't found anyone with similar issues that were resolved.

Help is greatly appreciated.

item.190046

Jim Weisbin

Ric Alonso wrote:

'I have a Mac Pro with 4 internal drives. Two of the drives are configured as a 4TB mirrored RAID. A few days ago the RAID stopped appearing in the Finder. The other drives are visible.'

Usually, if one member of a mirror RAID goes bad, the other should be visible but Disk Utility will report that the set is degraded. It is possible that the entire RAID has gone bad, but it is still worth trying to see if one or the other can be recovered. I would immediately remove both drives and test them individually in an external enclosure. Disk Warrior might be able to recover one of them, or at least get it mounted so you can copy from it.

item.190048

Wayne Tempro

Ric Alonso, you need to find a way to backup your stuff before it's all gone. I would start with Disk Warrior and have it mount the preview of the replacement directory, then copy/clone that preview to another functioning drive. Do not use Disk Warrior to replace the disk directory on the failing drive/RAID or you stand a very good chance of losing everything.
If DW does not work, then Data Rescue is your next choice. DR can dig a bit deeper, but it takes much longer to run and there is always a lot more work to get the data back to the correct location when doing a whole disk w/OS recovery.
You should also get 'SMART Utility'. It is a great little app to check the health status of your drive. It will spot failing hard drives faster that any other utility on the market.

item.193393

Remove Little Snitch Kext

David Gordon

I want to create a 'first aid kit' for travelling with my MacBook Pro, but we no longer have DVDs of the Mac OS to start up or rebuild from if - when! - trouble strikes.

I am running 10.9.4 but I don't have a Mavericks installer saved, should I ever need it (would I?) when away from a fast internet connection. Maybe I could download a copy and save it to a USB thumb drive?

I do have a 1TB portable FireWire drive, Time Machine, naturally, Chronosync, Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper and Disk Warrior. I wonder what other tools MacInTouch readers might recommend and how they'd go about creating an emergency kit.

item.193370

Jim Steckel

Within a few weeks, I hope to buy a 27' iMac, 3.5 GHx i7, 16 GB RAM and 3 TB Fusion Drive. Yea, I am splurging and buying a top of the line machine. It will last. My last iMac is 9 years old and still chugging along. Yesterday, I emailed the sales departments of Alsoft (DiskWarrior 4.4), Prosoft (Drive Genius 3.2.3 & Data Rescue 3) and Micromat (TechTool Pro 7.0.4). I asked each company the same two questions:

1. Is your product(s) compatible with Fusion drives?
2. When will your product(s) be updated to be compatible with Yosemite?

So far, 1 pm PDT, only Alsoft has responded. Actually, they responded twice. Their first response did not answer either of my questions. I wrote back and got no response about Fusion drives and got the following about Yosemite:

.. Until Yosemite is officially released, we cannot make any compatibility statements. Please understand that until the final release, the OS can be modified and changed.

Our technical support department did state that since Yosemite is a beta software, we do not provide support for Yosemite and DiskWarrior..

Yep, a second non-answer about Yosemite and again nothing was said about Fusion drives. I noted that they wouldn't even say if they are working on or will release an update.

So far, neither Micromat nor ProSoft has responded. I currently own TechTool Pro v7.0.4 and happily use it from time to time. I just found on their website that v7.0.2+ are fully Fusion drive compatible although optimizing hard drives defeats the OS X method of file synchronization.

So I guess I will just stay with TechTool Pro since I cannot find any reason to purchase either DiskWarrior, Drive Genius or Data Rescue 3. Does anyone else have any conclusions/opinions about these products?

Thanks ahead of time

item.193404

MacInTouch Reader

To answer David Gordon's question, I would suggest an application to clean 'stuff' like caches and cookies (Cocktail, Onyx, CCleaner, etc.) I would also suggest either Tech Tool Pro or Drive Genius for their repair capabilities, as mentioned in previous posts.

I have two 'emergency' options. The first option uses Tech Tool Pro's eDrive, which creates another partition on your internal hard drive that is bootable and contains Tech Tool Pro. You can also mount this drive and add other utility programs, like the ones you mentioned and the ones I described above. I also have an external hard drive that is bootable and contains the same utilities as on my eDrive.

item.193407

David Charlap

Regarding disk utilities (Disk Warrior, Tech Tool, etc.) and Fusion drives, it is important to remember that a Fusion drive is nothing special at the level where these tools operate.

A Fusion drive is a logical volume spanned across two physical drives. (Source: A MacWorld article on how to create your own.

As such, any utility that acts on a single volume/partition should not know or care that it is a fusion drive. There is one logical series of blocks and one directory. Tools to rebuild/repair the HFS+ structures should work just fine, as long as they have full support for the version of HFS+ the volume was formatted with.

The big question here is not whether the tools will work without damaging your files, but if they will respect the file-usage data Mac OS X uses to determine whether a file should be written to the blocks belonging to the SSD or to the blocks belonging to the hard drive. I would expect defragment utilities to cause the most problems if they are not explicitly written to respect the usage data.

On the other hand, the worst that should happen is that some frequently-used files/structures end up on the hard drive and/or some infrequently-used files/structures end up on the SSD. This may slow overall performance, but the Fusion Drive software should correct the situation over time as its normal operation dynamically moves files and structures to their proper place.

In other words, I think it is important to get statements from the utility vendors regarding what, if anything, they do to support Fusion drives, but even if they do nothing, I would expect the worst problem would be a temporary loss of performance, which should come back as the drive is used post-repair.

Needless to say, make a full backup before testing this theory. Actually, you should make a full backup before any disk-repair/defrag operation, because mistakes/bugs can happen even when the software is fully checked-out for your use-case.

item.193429

MacInTouch Reader

I use both Disk Warrior and Drive Genius. I like both of them. I find Alsoft (Disk Warrior) unresponsive, but I find ProSoft Engineering (Drive Genius) very responsive.

item.193481

Luis Sequeira

David Gordon asked about creating a OS installation disk using a USB thumb drive.

I carry one in my computer bag. Instructions for creating one are readily available online, for example here:

How to make your own bootable OS X 10.9 Mavericks USB install drive
Apple has changed things in 10.9, but making a recovery drive is still possible