Problems restoring a volume to an external SSD

Hi James,

Things don´t seem that easy as I thought...

A
I installed Catalina clean on a new external 1TB Nvme SSD.

B
Then I tried to restore my volume from my QRecall Archive to the external SSD using the "Restore Volume to..." command.

c
It failed

"Restore encountered Problems"

Your help would be highly appreciated because I can´t read the log information properly according to my IT non-knowledge...
I attached the Log File and a screenshot from the log menu of QRecall...

Many Thanks in advance and best from overseas

Nicolaj

Filename QRecall.log

Description Log QRecall

Filesize 6297 Kbytes

Downloaded 220 time(s)

[Disk] Download

[Thumb - Screenshot Log Window.png]

Filename Screenshot Log Window.png

Description Screenshot of QRecall Log window

Filesize 299 Kbytes

Downloaded 1656 time(s)

[Disk] Download

Sorry to hear you're having problems.

The log you sent would indicate that nothing was recalled, which is very strange. Particularly since you weren't booted from the Catalina-1TB-BladeSSD volume at the time. (It's not unusual to encounter permissions issues when recalling to the booted system volume, but it doesn't interfere with recalling the rest of your files.)

Here's my suggestion:

(1) Delete the Catalina-1TB-BladeSSD and Catalina-1TB-BladeSSD-Data volumes.
(2) Create and format an empty volume (make sure it's formatted APFS)
(3) Use the Restore Volume To... command to restore your Macintosh HD to the new, empty, volume.
(4) If that's successful, then run the Catalina installer and install macOS on top of the files you've restored.

If it's not successful (for the most part), then something else is very wrong. Please send a diagnostic report (choose Help > Send Report in the QRecall application). The report will include your recent log records as well as some information about your system and configuration.

Hi James,

I followed the steps you suggested but the same problem persists. By the way, ownership at both disks is set to "ignore".
I just sent you the Logfile out of QRecall as requested.

Thanks for your help!

Nico

Hi James,

I think I solved the problem: There was no full disk access checked for "com.qrecall.hoist"
in the system preferences (System Preferences->Security&Privacy->Privacy->Full Disk Access)...#
Sometimes things are pretty close but not visible

The restore is just working in the background
and hope it will be finished securely. Then I´ll install Catalina on top and hope everything is
working fine...

Thanks for your quick responses and much appreciated help

Greetings from overseas
Nico

I think I solved the problem: There was no full disk access checked for "com.qrecall.hoist"

Security will definitely make restores harder.

Just FYI, the "Ignore ownership and permission" option must be turned off when restoring items on a startup volume.

And if you look at your log, you'll see that QRecall set that option back when it started the restore:

2021-01-26 09:28:40.549 Setting "uses ownership and permission" on volume Catalina-1TB-BladeSSD

Hello James,

thnx for your quick reply!

Just another question:

Just FYI, the "Ignore ownership and permission" option must be turned off when restoring items on a startup volume.

Does this mean I have to redo the restore on my blade SSD again?

Best

Nico

Nico Dudek wrote:Does this mean I have to redo the restore on my blade SSD again?

No, the restore is fine.

What I was simply pointing out is that ownership and permissions are a requirement for startup volumes and home folders.

QRecall knows this and thoughtfully restored ownership and permissions before it started the restore.

So if you go check, you'll see that ownership and permissions has been set again on that volume. (Note that the macOS installer will also force ownership and permissions back on...)

Hi James,

thanks!

Now that the restore is done and the question of ownership is clear to me I have a general question regarding
archive handling:

I have restored the Archive from my desktop to the external SSD. My goal is, after opening my iMac in the next days for
RAM upgrade and resolving the Fusion Drive to afterwards using the external SSD as my main system/boot/data disk and using the
internal disks only as additional data volumes. Until I do this I´ll use the internal FD of the iMac as I did before.

So I have a restored Archive on the external SSD disk with the state from yesterday. The installed QRecall points
to the same archive like my still working internal FD on my iMac.
I left the external SSD as it is and worked today on my iMac booting from FD. There were QR captures
today so the state of the archive reflects the system from now, whereas the external SSD reflects the archive state from yesterday when
I restored the archive.

If I would restore the archive again AFTER doing all my hardware upgrade work again on the external Blade SSD would this be incremental
or would QR do it from scratch?

Thanks again for your answer

Nico

Nico Dudek wrote:If I would restore the archive again AFTER doing all my hardware upgrade work again on the external Blade SSD would this be incremental
or would QR do it from scratch?

QRecall also performs incremental/smart restores.

When restoring a group of files, QRecall compares each existing file to the one in the archive. If they appear to be identical, it skips the file and moves on to the next.

And even if it decides to overwrite the file with the version in the archive, it actually starts by reading the file and comparing it, byte-by-byte, with the version in the archive (rather than blinding overwriting the same data). This is because reading is generally faster than writing and it avoids overwriting SSD sectors when it doesn't have to. (Flash memory blocks have a limited number of write cycles, so every write shortens its lifespan.)

So your second restore should be pretty quick and won't age you new SSD.

Moving forward...

You'll eventually want to switch to capturing your new SSD volume once your migration is finished. This might happen automatically once your SSD is your startup volume. If it doesn't, edit the capture item in the action.

The first post-migration capture will create a new volume in your archive.

Since this volume is essentially the same set of files that was on your original Fusion Drive, you'll want to Combine the two volumes so it appears in your archive as a single volume with a single history. (See Help > QRecall Help > Guide > Advanced > Combine Items)

Enjoy your new SSD!

Filename	QRecall.log
Description	Log QRecall
Filesize	6297 Kbytes
Downloaded	220 time(s)
Download


Filename	Screenshot Log Window.png
Description	Screenshot of QRecall Log window
Filesize	299 Kbytes
Downloaded	1656 time(s)
Download