error -43

[davidduff]

i'm having a problem with error -43 which is preventing me from being able to make a copy of my main drive.

 

 

 

if i try to do a direct duplicate of the drive, i completely scan the source drive, then scan the destination drive, then start copying, it dies about 10% of the way through the copy process. the log entries i see are:

 

 

 

FscGetFSRef: Implement work around for Japanese named folders

 

FscMacToUni: ConvertFromPStringToUnicode failed, error -8783

 

FscMacToUni: (second try) ConvertFromPStringToUnicode failed, error -8783

 

FscGetFSRef: FSpMakeFSRef failed, errror -43

 

Trouble writing files, error -43 (file/folder not found)

 

 

 

it's not completely clear whether the four lines begining with "Fsc..." are directly related to the -43 error or if they are non-fatal msgs that happen earlier in the process. i'll have to watch the log more closely during the process next time.

 

 

 

things i've tried: boot from os x install cd and run disk first aid on the source drive. completely erased the destination drive with apple disk utility. turned on detailed logging of filesystem errors. i can even open the list of files prior to running the duplicate. however, scanning the list of files doesn't reveal the source of the problem (but then, i really don't know what i should be looking for, either).

 

 

 

so right now, i am completely unable to backup my drive. it seems i have little hope of ever being able to find or fix the problem, since the log messages don't say what file or folder is causing the problem.

 

 

 

i could really use some help! thanks.

 

 

 

 

[davidduff]

after a very tedious trial and error process, i have narrowed the problem down my idvd application folder being the cause of the problem.

 

 

 

i may try to do a re-installation of idvd to see if it is the case that a file became corrupted or if this is just a fundamental problem with retrospect and idvd.

 

 

 

for now, if i manually de-select the idvd folder, the duplicate runs to completion.

 

 

 

 

[davidduff]

so, it turns out that a standard iDVD 2 installation consists of a folder which contains the iDVD application and about a dozen subfolders containing "README"-type information in different languages/scripts. the names of some of them appear in the finder as chinese-style characters, i assume this means they have names that use multi-byte characters?

 

 

 

i opened the iDVD folder inside my applications folder, selected everything except the idvd application and the english version of the README folder and dragged them to trash. after that, retrospect was able to duplicate my entire disk just fine.

 

 

 

so it seems pretty clear that retrospect has some kind of problem with folders with international characters in the names.

 

 

 

still i have a strange feeling that there still must be something peculiar about my system to have caused this error. iDVD 2 is a pretty commonly-used application, is it not? i expect i would have heard about this problem already if it were affecting everyone with iDVD 2 installed...