This study was performed as a part of the research on the development of a maskless and electroless process for fabricating metal micro/nanostructures by using a nanoindenter and an electroless deposition technique. $2-{mu}m$-deep indentation tests on Ni and Cu samples were performed. The elastic recovery of the Ni and Cu was 9.30% and 9.53% of the maximum penetration depth, respectively. The hardness and the elastic modulus were 1.56 GPa and 120 GPa for Ni and 1.51 GPa and 104 GPa for Cu. The effect of single-point diamond machining conditions such as the Berkovich tip orientation (0, 45, and $90^{circ}$ ) and the normal load (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 3, and 5 mN), on both the deformation behavior and the morphology of cutting traces (such as width and depth) was investigated by constant-load scratch tests. The tip orientation had a significant influence on the coefficient of friction, which varied from 0.52-0.66 for Ni and from 0.46- 0.61 for Cu. The crisscross-pattern sample showed that the tip orientation strongly affects the surface quality of the machined are a during scratching. A selective deposition of Cu at the pit-like defect on a p-type Si(111) surface was also investigated. Preferential deposition of the Cu occurred at the surface defect sites of silicon wafers, indicating that those defect sites act as active sites for the deposition reaction. The shape of the Cu-deposited area was almost the same as that of the residual stress field.