Weird issue with Safari on a cloned drive

[Robert M]

Weird issue with Safari on a cloned drive

Hi everyone,

My Mac Pro has 2 qty 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives. One is the primary drive, the other a clone of the primary drive. Every once in a while I boot off the clone to allow Dropbox to update the files in the Dropbox folder of the clone. I started doing this because it takes Dropbox a very long time to update the files, even if the files have barely changed. Not sure why but it appears the case.

Since the Mac Pro was powered up and dropbox was syncing, I decided to perform a quick check of the forum. So, I attempted to power up Safari. It stalled and resulted in a spinning beach ball. End result is I had to force Safari to quit. I tried Safari two more times with the same result. After Dropbox finished its sync, I rebooted off the primary drive.

No problems running Safari off the primary drive. Thinking something may have gotten skewed in the clone process, I decided to reclone the primary drive. After cloning the primary drive, I booting off the clone to see if it resolved the problem. No. Same issue. Safari won’t finishing opening and stops responding. No problems with it on the primary drive. Just on the clone.

I’ve cloned the primary drive with both SuperDuper and Drive Genius. This is the first time I’ve ever had an issue with a clone. Other apps such as Mail, Word and such all work fine. Whatever is happening appears to be affecting just Safari. Any ideas as to what might be happening?

Thanks in advance,

Robert

[GGD]

Does Safari work OK from a guest account on that system?

[Robert M]

GGD,

Good question... I'll double-check that when I get home. I have a test account just for that purpose.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Robert

[GGD]

Robert M wrote:
GGD,

Good question... I'll double-check that when I get home. I have a test account just for that purpose.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Robert

The guest account is even better for testing, all of it's files get deleted on logout, so you know you're starting in a fresh state and have nothing from the previous drive contents or from a previous login.

[Robert M]

GGD,

I booted into the test account and Safari worked perfectly. Definitely an issue with the primary account. I decided to wipe the drive and clone the primary drive again.

Robert

[Robert M]

Hi everyone,

Very strange. No issues with Safari while logged in on the test account or the guest account on the clone. Only when logged in under the primary account. I cloned the drive again and the problem has vanished. Possibly, Drive Genius doesn't necessarily create as reliable a clone as Superduper. As I've only used Drive Genius for clones a few times and never had an issue, it could've just been a fluke.

Robert