
The hidden Volumes folder
A note about disks, the hidden Volumes folder and other things
Backing up to an external disk or hard drive is fairly straightforward. You drag the disk icon (or a folder inside the disk) into the "Destination" text field, add your source files to the source list and backup.
But what if the disk is not connected, or mounted, to your computer. In that case backuplist+ will wait one minute and check again to see if it is there and if not the session quits with a warning "no disk present..." This is useful if you have the backup scheduled to occur once a day and the computer starts up but your connected disk has not finished mounting, or "spinning up." Backuplist+ gives it time to mount and then proceeds with the backup. And if the disk is not connected you will see the error dialog and do something about it.
If the destination folder has changed names or moved or no longer exists, then you will get an error saying "There is no destination present."
The Volumes folder
There is a hidden folder at root level on your hard drive called Volumes. You can't see it because it is hidden! This folder contains the aliases of all mounted disks or "volumes." This is used by the system to keep track of disks. There are known problems that can happen with the Volumes folder, often when a disk is unmounted incorrectly (pulling the plug) but often for no apparent reason. I have received many emails from people who have found backups "missing" on a destination drive. This is a side effect of how the Mac Finder handles disks and not a bug in backuplist+ or any other backup software.
This can result in there being disk alias for a disk that is not actually mounted. The next time the real disk is mounted it gets a new alias with a "1" appended to its name. This can cause big problems when copying to the original disk because the data will go into the folder for the false disk alias. For this reason backuplist+ checks several different scenarios to ensure that the disk you are copying to is real and it is mounted.
Backuplist+ scans the Volumes folder and any mounted disks before each backup to make sure there is nothing that could cause a backup to go to the wrong place. If you get a warning about the Volumes folder or the mounted disks, unmount all disks and check the Volumes folder and restart.
You can also use the ""Open Volumes folder" menu item in backuplist+ Window menu (or the Logs menu in background mode.)
Disk health and safety:
1. Do not name disks the same name or, if you do, do not mount both at the same time!
2. Be careful about pulling the plug on disks (drag to trash the proper way.)
3. If you get an error about the Volumes folder, unmount all disks, look in the Volumes folder, and trash any aliases that do not represent mounted disks. To see the hidden volumes folder, select "Go to folder..." in the Finder's "Go" Menu and enter "/Volumes" in the text field.