Friday, October 09, 2009

A little mystery SOLVED

Update:
Another mystery was that a folder I had excluded from Time Machine backups on the old machine was not included in the transfer.
Joe Kissell from TidBITS solved both mysteries at once: I had selected the Time Machine backups disk as source instead of the main disk on the old Mac! When migrating there were two sources with the same name, and I just selected the first one without thinking much about it. That's a flaw in the Migration app: it should indicate which is the T.M. back volume and which is the main disk.

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OK, here is a little mystery for the computer-savvy amongst you:

Thursday about 18.00 I updated the home page and related files on my commercial site. After having done that, I set up my new computer, and started it on the long, automatic process of transferring all my settings and file from the old computer.

And today, when I opened those pages/files on the new computer, they looked as they had looked before the update on Thursday! They had the pictures and text I put on them Wednesday evening. But how the heck is that possible? The files were changed and saved, otherwise I could not have uploaded them. And on the web site it was clear that I had updated them.

I have booted up the old computer, and on that machine the pages do appear like after the Thursday update. So how did the Migration application go back in time and get the pages as they looked hours earlier? Any ideas at all?

Update:
I think Ray is on the track. Golive *does* make backup copies. I didn't think of them, because for a while they've been useless, and because I was sure they did not contain the actual text of the pages, after all that is what you have the actual .html files for. But I *did* do an hours-long aborted attempt at opening the "site" file, and that must have back-stored the old text somehow. (I do run Time Machine backups, but obviously since they are on a separate disk, those were not transferred from the old machine.)

7 comments:

Dan said...

Maybe it transferred the most recent 'restore point' (a Microsoft term) instead of the actual files?

Chris S. said...

It's all in the details. How did you transfer things over? What programs, options etc. Not that I would have an answer, but in the details there may be clues.

Ray said...

To me, this sounds like your new one updated itself by installing a back-up copy from the old one.
If that's what happened, try making another back-up using the new files you want it to display, and then if it uses those for its "update" you will have what you want.

Or maybe try turning off any back-up programs before applying your latest update. It has to be something like that, because it's obviously updating from older information, and there are only a limited number of options from which it could choose that. So have another look for back-ups or restoration programs, and try to take them out of the picture temporarily, until you get it set as you want it. And make sure you click on "save" for every change you make, so it keeps them for you.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I think Ray is on the track. Golive *does* make backup copies. I didn't think of them, because for a while they've been useless, and because I was sure they did not contain the actual text of the pages, after all that is what you have the actual .html files for.
But I *did* do an hours-long aborted attempt at opening the "site" file, and that must have back-stored the old text somehow.
(I do run Time Machine backups, but obviously since they are on a separate disk, those were not transferred from the old machine.)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Update:
Another mystery was that a folder I had excluded from Time Machine backups on the old machine was not included in the transfer.
Joe Kissell from TidBITS solved both mysteries at once: I had selected the Time Machine backups disk as source instead of the main disk on the old Mac! When migrating there were two sources with the same name, and I just selected the first one without thinking much about it. That's a flaw in the Migration app: it should indicate which is the T.M. back volume and which is the main disk.

Ray said...

Are you able to assign your own file names or drive letters to your folders? If you can, then you can label one as "Main Drive" or "Drive + an alphabetical letter" (The main Windows Drive is always 'C' and the DVD Drive is either 'D' or 'E') and then name your back-up folder as "My Back-up 01" or "Back-up-02" etc., etc., etc. - and that way, you won't have any trouble telling them apart.

In Windows (I realize you're on a Mac) there are certain protected system files that we can't rename or delete or move, even with the top 'Administrator' status, and if yours has something similar, then you may not be able to use my suggestion, but have a peek at it anyway, just in case.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Oh, I *do* have different names for the drives etc. See here.
But I suppose it's a bug in the migration app, because these names did not show up in the app, there was just the computer's main name ("Eolake's Power Mac"), twice.