How do I deal with forbidden characters during HD backup?

October 24, 2007 8:09 PM

[MacFilter] I am trying to back up my iMac onto a portable HD. I get an error for each folder/file name with non-alphanumeric characters, and once the error pops up, the copying stops cold. Please help me find a way around this.

I am preparing my iMac, which is running 10.3.9, for upgrade to Leopard. Since I plan to do a completely clean install (based partly on advice found elsewhere on MeFi), I am backing up every file onto a Western Digital (WD) portable hard drive connected via USB port.

I select the Documents folder and drag it to the WD/HD icon. Copying starts and almost immediately stops, with an error stating that the file named "* Simon" cannot be copied because the file name contains a character that can't be used. Obviously it's referring to the *. I click OK, and that's it. All copying stops. Nothing else starts. My entire backup is aborted. So far, one file has been copied. This is not good.

If I change "* Simon" to just "Simon" and start over, it works, until it gets to the next file containing a non-alphanumeric character. I have been a Macintosh user since 1984, and am consequently in the habit of using pretty much any character I want in my file names, so hundreds of my folder and file names are affected. It's just not possible to go through the entire tree and manually change each one.

So -- my questions:

1. Is there a way to get the WD/HD to deal with these file names?

2. Is there a way to do a mass search and replace on all the offensive characters on my iMac's HD? (This is obviously less optimal, since I used those characters in file names for a reason, i.e. I wanted them in there. But I am willing to make this massive change to avoid the alternatives.)

3. Is there something else that I am not thinking of that would solve the problem?

Thanks in advance.

posted by Capri to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I'm no expert, but this guide suggests using SuperDuper to backup your HD, and suggests that even the demo mode will create a workable backup for a Leopard migration.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:16 PM on October 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

also damn easy: put your install disk into the CD drive and restart. Hold C after the "bwaaaahn" to boot off of the cd. It'll tell you you're about to wipe your drive and install again; you have to say ok to the first few questions, but only answer until you can get access to the menu at the top of the screen. One of the entries up there gives you access to Disk Utility. Use that to make a disk image of your internal drive on your external.

Email's in my profile if you want a more detailed walkthrough.
posted by tylermoody at 8:21 PM on October 24, 2007

he external drive is probably formatted FAT32, which disallows certain characters (" * / : <> ? \ |) as part of file names. Try reformatting it to HFS with the Disk Utility; that should solve your problem.
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:33 PM on October 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

Another thing that comes to mind - how have you formatted the external HD? If its not HFS+, you might have problems with long/extended names.

In any case, I've had excellent experiences with SuperDuper - I just used it last week to migrate 70Gb to a new drive. Worked flawlessly.

Also in the same vein, Carbon Copy Cloner and Psync. I'd recommend SuperDuper tho.

The advantage of using SuperDuper/CCC rather than manually copying the files is that you'll then have a fully bootable image of your existing hard drive - not something you'd get just by dragging stuff in Finder.

During the upgrade, you can just erase/install Leopard, and point Migration Assistant at the external HD.
posted by jsoh at 8:34 PM on October 24, 2007

A quick addendum: format it to HFS+, not HFS - dunno if the Disk Utility even offers old-school HFS as an option. But if you didn't reformat the drive, it almost certainly shipped with FAT32. Normally that's perfectly fine; FAT32 is, sadly, still the most universally read/writable format for drives, easily handled by Windows, Macs, and Linux. But it's also old and limited, and one of its limits happens to be that it can't have certain characters in file names.
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:37 PM on October 24, 2007

Agreed. Format to HFS+. Worked for me.
posted by sourwookie at 9:06 PM on October 24, 2007

The latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner is fantastic and more or less equivalent to SuperDuper. Highly recommended.

Oh, and format the drive as HFS+.
posted by pmbuko at 9:54 PM on October 24, 2007

Thanks all.
posted by Capri at 5:47 AM on October 25, 2007