[Helmling]

I've learned an unfortunate lesson (and I wanted to see how many other people are encountering this problem too) about Time Machine. If something interrupts a back-up, then the back-up volume becomes corrupted and must be removed and a new one created.

Last time, my other computer hit the Time Capsule to restore some accidentally deleted photos while my laptop was trying to back-up and then the laptop's back-up disc image had to be deleted and a new one created before Time Machine could work again.

This time I apparently closed my Macbook at the wrong moment and when I got to work I got an error message when Time Machine could no longer find the back-up volume. Now that I'm plugged in Time Machine still can't mount the back-up volume.

Last time, I spent hours on the horn with Applecare (who were uncustomarily clueless) before I just scrapped the back-up volume and started over. Now I know what to do. Fortunately it's a lazy Saturday afternoon and leaving the laptop on for a few hours to create a new back-up isn't a big deal, but I'm hoping Apple is cooking up an update to address some of this.

[TETENAL]

Sounds more like a problem with Time Capsule to me. For me with local disks only Time Machine had no problem whatsoever with interrupted backups so far.

[Helmling]

Well, considering that the marketing for Time Capsule revolves around Time Machine, I'd consider it one and the same.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a great back-up solution...but it's not quite living up to all that was advertised.

After one hour fiddling up on the roof with the air conditioner: 1.6 of 58 Gb

Good thing I don't need to take the laptop out on the town tonight.

[benz]

yes, similar issue about time machine, well, i just got a " century FW/eSATA external HDD stand as an back up drive using 2.5 SATA HDD. the volume is 90Gb, but failed repeatedly and leads to OS crash.
first i think it might be issue of eSATA, but seems also fail in FW800 connection, with above threads , i think it may be TM issue, now i am trying to delete the backup.db, and try again , but really annoying, another issue is that i am not sure about the stability of retreving back up data?

benz

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

Well, considering that the marketing for Time Capsule revolves around Time Machine, I'd consider it one and the same.

It revolves around three things: Time Machine, AFP, and 802.11n. Like TETENAL, I've had no trouble at all with interrupting backups on my locally-connected FW800 drive, so my guess would be that it has something to do with the AFP part of things. The other thing that could have something to do with it is the fact that AFP-connected backup drives use sparsebundles instead of just ordinary directories to store the backups - it's possible that the sparsebundle could have become corrupted somehow. Does the sparsebundle mount if you double-click on it?

[Helmling]

The sparsebundle was actually usable. At one point the Applecare people had me restore to my last successful back-up. However, something about it was also corrupted because it still would not accept new back-ups after that restore. I don't pretend to know how TM indexing everything, but it's obviously very complex and it seems anything that complex cannot live up to the hype of it being simple and painless for the consumer.

Keep in mind, it's not every interrupted back-up session that results in this scenario. I've usually been free to close my laptop whenever I wanted and be on my merry way. This one time, though, something went amiss. I'm thinking there are--probably brief--critical phases of the back-up process that can result in the whole shebang going haywire.

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by benz 

yes, similar issue about time machine, well, i just got a " century FW/eSATA external HDD stand as an back up drive using 2.5 SATA HDD. the volume is 90Gb, but failed repeatedly and leads to OS crash.
first i think it might be issue of eSATA, but seems also fail in FW800 connection, with above threads , i think it may be TM issue, now i am trying to delete the backup.db, and try again , but really annoying, another issue is that i am not sure about the stability of retreving back up data?

benz

I copy my sparsebundle to another directory so that I still have those old back-ups if need be. Even when they become corrupted and data can't be added, they still seem to be stable to retrieve data from. If you've got the space, maybe you should do that.

[turtle777]

Let's face it: TM is very 1.0.

As soon as something out of the normal happens, all kinds of things get out of control. TM does what it promises to do, but that's it. It doesn't deal well with any sort of unexpected things.

-t

[bishopazrael]

For what its worth... and I know it's not much on this thread... but I never understood why God has decided that us lowly disciples should do backups over wireless. Just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've never been a fan of backups like this over wireless. Honestly a firewire drive plugged in once a week would be fine.

[TETENAL]

A firewire drive plugged in once a week is useless for hourly backups.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

A firewire drive plugged in once a week is useless for hourly backups.

That doesn't debunk his main point, just leave the FW plugged in all the time.

And if you need to access data while moving your laptop around, access it from a networked drive.

-t

[bishopazrael]

Tet..... see the thing is... how many people need an HOURLY backup? This device was marketed towards HOME users. That being the case, I'm sure there are some home users who would like hourly backups, but there are very few who need it. I believe, at least from my understanding of my client base is that most people use their lappy's mobile during the day, but plug it in to the base every night. Usually the base includes a power cord, firewire cord, usb cord that goes to a usb hub, then an audio out plug that goes to a set of speakers, and sometimes the dvi out, thats what most people have for their setup in one fashion or another. So it's my contention that a once daily backup made at 2 am is more than suffecient for their needs. After all... industry standard IT practice for backups was once daily last time I looked. If it's good enough for industry, why isn't it good enough for home users? Just because Steve & his harem of Angles says so?

Once daily is fine for most people who would tell you ... hell.. even once weekly would be great.

[CharlesS]

Especially since the hourly backups tend to slow down single-core machines something fierce.

[benz]

again, i think the issue is on TM, rather than my connection setup, as i tried repeatedly doing back up from TM via either eSATA , or FW 800 but failed in the sense that the OS crash indeed. then i zero the HD and backup file by file/ folder by folder by again using eSATA for ~16Gb data. works fine and had the job done quickly. my config. is MBP 2.4C2D, 4Gb Ram, latest leopard. i guess TM back up is really complicated as it needs to back up the updated, modified files as well. may be if the file is rarely modified or file is simple, that TM can handle because i once use TM to backup of ~110Gb data using FW 400, well it works, but the data structure contains 2 folders with mass size.
so....... structure / complexity of the Db do count, that' s what i feel


benz

[Mojo-ike]

the same thing has happened to me twice. both times required starting my backups all over from scratch. the first time was with 10.5.0 and the second time was with 10.5.2. both times were with a unsupported simpleshare NAS drive (susing SMB) over ethernet (wireless is evil). despite the promises of several utilities, including disk warrior, i could not rescue the corrupted sparsebundle.

its nice that there is a spinning time machine icon in the menu bar, but its not like it is bright red - it takes time to re-learn that i need to check that before putting my machine manually to sleep.

[Drakino]

I haven't had any issues with my laptop backing up to my NAS over AFP since 10.5.2 and the Time Machine patch. I can sleep the machine or remove it from the network in the middle of a backup, and nothing goes wrong. Next time Time Machine runs, it cleans up the partial attempt from last time and keeps going.

Opening the Console app, changing to All Messages on the left, then searching for "backup" can reveal useful messages as to what Time Machine is doing. Prior to 10.5.2, I did have interruptions cause some issues, but they were resolved by mounting the sparseimage, then manually nuking any inProgress files. Maybe I've been lucky, but I never bothered to be careful with my laptop when it was backing up, and I've been using Time Machine on my NAS since 2 days after Leopard came out.

Yeah, it's not foolproof (as shown by me having to nuke things in the past), but I've never had a problem that has caused me to nuke the entire backup image, or even a completed backup.

[MacosNerd]

FWIW, my TM backups so far appear to be fine and have had no corruption issues. The external drive is hooked up to my MBP via a FW800 cable. So far based on this thread this appears to be the safest approach

[jsyoung82]

FWIW, which Apple machines are these problems occurring on? Specifically, did these machines ship pre- or post-Leopard? The reason I ask is that my wife's pre-Leopard MBP has constant issues (this one included) while my also pre-Leopard MB does not. It seems to me from my experience, as well as others I've talked to, that since Leopard was released (be it 10.5.0-10.5.2) some particular machines have had issues and others not. It's really too bad for us that it's happened this way--my machine is strictly for fun, while my wife's is for work--meaning the one that we need to work doesn't. We've tried all sorts of things to fix her machine, but are pretty much resigned to either go back to Tiger at this point, or get her a new machine that was made post-Leopard (and thusly designed for it). Good upgrade as far as Apple's concerned, I guess $$$

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by jsyoung82 

FWIW, which Apple machines are these problems occurring on? Specifically, did these machines ship pre- or post-Leopard? The reason I ask is that my wife's pre-Leopard MBP has constant issues

My MBP is nearly a year old, and so its most definitely a pre-leopard machine. I purchased leopard when it first came out and as I mentioned in my prior post I've not run into any problems with TM. I have used the restore facility a few times, once for a full system restore and the other times to restore a file or two.

[benz]

desperate that i finally leave the TM after repeated trials using it a back up, now i stop trying may be till TM update, and now just manually copy files from MBP to the external HD via eSATA, well, not so convenient but at least it works with very reasonable speed by eSATA