Bad files names in backup

Rick Stirling

Registered
I've just got myself a 40GB external USB drive to use to backup the user folders on my Mac. My plan was to just grab the Users folder and copy it, but I'm running into problems, and it's mostly to do with filenames.

MSN Messenger saves its logs with a date, and the date includes the @ symbol. So the mac reaches those files and stops.

Some of my MP3 files have got ?'s in them, and again the copy process aborts when it gets that far.

Any ideas on how to proceed?
 
How is your disk formatted? Sounds to me like it was made for PCs, and is formatted in a way that doesn't like special characters.

If I'm right, re-initialize it as an HFS+ volume using Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities/).
 
Thanks! I'll give that a go tonight. The USB disk is formatted for windows use, as it is a portable hard disk and media device reader. There does appear to be OS X drivers available for it, so I'll format it see what happens.
 
Rick Stirling said:
My plan was to just grab the Users folder and copy it, but I'm running into problems, and it's mostly to do with filenames.
A good plan at first glance, but there are lots of other problems besides file names that will make any recovery from that backup highly problematic. In OS X you also have to consider such things as file ownership and permissions which can be royally fouled up with your drag and drop scheme.

I have answered similar posts to yours often enough I finally created a web page that discusses what you need to consider in any backup strategy. If you are interested you can see it here. Depending on the backup strategy you elect to use there are a number of backup utilities ranging in price from free all the way up to over $100. IMHO this is generally a case where you get what you pay for.
 
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