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schalliol · Dec 14, 2008, 02:29 PM

D'oh!

Hal Itosis · May 8, 2009, 01:56 AM

BackupLoupe

Simon · May 8, 2009, 02:22 AM

It looks nice, but other than that, can it do more than CharlesS' free TT?

MacNNUK · May 8, 2009, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by idea2go

All I get is a blank 3 column window (nothing to click on). Could this be because I use Time Capsule?

I found the same until ...

Open Time Machine

Then open the app.

Hal Itosis · May 8, 2009, 07:10 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

It looks nice, but other than that, can it do more than CharlesS' free TT?

Haven't used it as yet (just wanted to make its existence known to the thread).
So do their results seem to agree then, or are any differences being reported?

I do agree though, something like that shouldn't cost much.
(and it would be best if Apple provided that feature anyway).

steve626 · May 9, 2009, 10:31 PM

Another thing for people to be aware of with respect to being surprised when big files are backed up:

For people that use Entourage, Microsoft saw fit to put ALL the emails into one single data base file. So if you get one little email, the entire database gets changed/updated. Since it is one file, backup programs have no choice but to copy it over when checking for changed files. People who save/archive lots of emails with large attachments can easily accumulate gigabytes of stuff in a few months.

For people who use their Intel Macs as a PC via programs like Parallels, they also put the entire PC (memory plus hard disk) into one big multi-Gigabyte file. So just booting into Windows via Parallels can result in a 10 or 20 Gigabyte file needing to be backed up next time.

Simon · May 10, 2009, 03:47 AM

Originally Posted by steve626

For people who use their Intel Macs as a PC via programs like Parallels, they also put the entire PC (memory plus hard disk) into one big multi-Gigabyte file. So just booting into Windows via Parallels can result in a 10 or 20 Gigabyte file needing to be backed up next time.

That's right. Which is why I ended up removing my Parallels disk image from TM's backup list.

JoshFofer · Jul 28, 2009, 09:43 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

I've put up a new build of TimeTracker that should (hopefully) work with AFP-connected drives and Time Capsules:

http://www.charlessoft.com/TimeTracker.zip

I haven't been able to test either of those things myself...

FWIW, I just wanted to chime in here: I am a Time Capsule user, and neither the original TimeTracker, nor the "new build" mentioned in the quote above, seem to work for me on my MacBook Pro running 10.5.7. Yes, my sparse image is mounted (I have just entered Time Machine, and the TM backup is running currently.) However, both apps do the same thing, they merely show me three blank columns.

BackupLoupe and the modified GrandPerspective seem to work fine, however.

Any hints appreciated.

CharlesS · Jul 28, 2009, 10:58 AM

The problem likely has something to do with the fact that I don't have a Time Capsule, so it's a little hard to test things like this. Do any errors appear in the Console?

JoshFofer · Jul 28, 2009, 11:19 AM

No, not seeing anything relevant in Console... what should I be looking for? I am using the "modified" version posted here.

My sparse-bundle is mounted (a backup is happening as I type) but the TimeTracker UI just shows me three blank panes. Just like the unmodified version does.

I just thought it was weird that it worked for other folks (like Drakino) but not me, since there's nothing all that strange about my system. Just a unibody MacBook Pro, connected to a Time Capsule, backing up wirelessly and hourly.

As a side note... if I had a desktop (or worked at a desk, heh) I'd probably be using an external firewire drive instead. But the convenience and peace of mind that backups are made for me automatically, whereever I happen to be in my house, without having to stop what I am doing and plug something in... has been a dream. Yes, I've had my share of TM problems over the months (slow backups; having to clear out the TC 2 or 3 times and start fresh; and the most recent, using the widget Time Machine buddy to individually identify precisely which files my fresh backup was choking on, so I could remove them. But I'm still grateful for the solution. It works well enough, and I look forward to it maturing.

CharlesS · Jul 28, 2009, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by JoshFofer

No, not seeing anything relevant in Console... what should I be looking for? I am using the "modified" version posted here.

My sparse-bundle is mounted (a backup is happening as I type) but the TimeTracker UI just shows me three blank panes. Just like the unmodified version does.

I just thought it was weird that it worked for other folks (like Drakino) but not me, since there's nothing all that strange about my system. Just a unibody MacBook Pro, connected to a Time Capsule, backing up wirelessly and hourly.

As a side note... if I had a desktop (or worked at a desk, heh) I'd probably be using an external firewire drive instead. But the convenience and peace of mind that backups are made for me automatically, whereever I happen to be in my house, without having to stop what I am doing and plug something in... has been a dream. Yes, I've had my share of TM problems over the months (slow backups; having to clear out the TC 2 or 3 times and start fresh; and the most recent, using the widget Time Machine buddy to individually identify precisely which files my fresh backup was choking on, so I could remove them. But I'm still grateful for the solution. It works well enough, and I look forward to it maturing.

Could you send me an e-mail? It's "support", then the symbol you get by typing shift-2, then "charlessoft", then a period, then "com". I can send you some debug builds and see if we can't track down what's going on.

Simon · Apr 28, 2010, 02:59 AM

Charles, do you have any plans on updating TT for SL? I haven't been able to get it to work properly on SL. Whatever entry I select the right column remains blank.

[Mods, I'm aware this is an old thread. But it is the TT thread. Anyway, feel free to split the post off to a new thread on TT if you believe it's appropriate.]

angelmb · Apr 28, 2010, 03:07 AM

Simon, TimeTracker works fine for me with 10.6.3.

Simon · Apr 28, 2010, 03:11 AM

Ouch. Thanks for the heads-up though.

I thought it was SL because I remember it working just fine on 10.5.7, but not since I've updated to SL. What could I have screwed up on my TM backup to stop TT from working?

CharlesS · Apr 28, 2010, 12:26 PM

Try deleting its caches (in ~/Library/Caches). I need to figure out a better way to handle the caching - the way it is now makes it easy for the app to get broken if the caches get messed up.

Simon · Apr 28, 2010, 12:42 PM

Thanks for the tip. I didn't think of that. But it sure makes sense. I'll try it as soon as I get back home.

Simon · Apr 28, 2010, 03:33 PM

I deleted the cache, but still no dice. My TM backups show up on the left hand side. When I click on one of them my HD appears on the right side, but when I click on the triangle no files are displayed at all.

I looked at the content in the cache folder. Both the Info.plist and the CacheData file in the subfolders have content. The cache data files actually look like they indeed contain what was backed up. But no display of that information in TT. Any ideas?

CharlesS · Apr 28, 2010, 03:35 PM

Actually, that sounds like an exception's probably getting thrown somewhere. Does anything show up in the Console?

Simon · Apr 28, 2010, 03:52 PM

Yep, there sure does.

28.4.10 21:50:34 TimeTracker[2936] changes ref count is 4
28.4.10 21:50:34 TimeTracker[2936] took 0.026023 seconds to read from cache for /***/2010-04-07-065448
28.4.10 21:50:36 TimeTracker[2936] -[FileItem compare:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x153a80
28.4.10 21:50:36 TimeTracker[2936] -[FileItem compare:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x153a80

CharlesS · Apr 28, 2010, 11:38 PM

That's weird. I assume you tried trashing the prefs file too?

Simon · Apr 29, 2010, 02:36 AM

Yeah, did that too. I can try again when I get back.

CharlesS · Apr 29, 2010, 06:27 AM

I think it would be better to troubleshoot this off the board. Please send me an e-mail: support (squiggly thing) charlessoft (decimal point) сοṁ.

Simon · Apr 29, 2010, 12:48 PM

Won't be necessary, it's fixed.

I started from the beginning again and deleted everything I could find related to TT. I then launched it and had it index from scratch. Now everything's back to normal again and entries show up like before I updated to SL. Thanks for your help, Charles.

CharlesS · Apr 29, 2010, 01:44 PM

Well, some good has come of it — as I was cleaning up the latest source code in order to make you a debug build, I revisited the issue that I'd been banging my head against the last time I worked on this. A fresh look revealed the issue to be a really simple bone-headed thing, and it's now fixed. I will probably be able to put up a new beta build sometime before too long.

Simon · Apr 29, 2010, 01:49 PM

So a classical win-win I guess.

Simon · May 8, 2010, 02:01 AM

A heads-up, Charles. I have an idea what triggers this behavior in TT. It has something to do with switching the system a TM backup is linked to.

The first time I had issues after manually re-associating a Leopard TM to a new Leopard system after a MLB swap. And now it just happened again after migrating a SL TM backup to a new SL Mac via SL's built-in TM migration. In both cases TT displayed the issues I detailed above. And in both cases deleting both TT's cache folder and prefs solved the issue.

cgc · May 8, 2010, 08:28 AM

My TM backup would transfer ~40GB all the time until I told it to NOT backup my virtual drive folder (which contained my Ubuntu, Windows Vista, and other virtual drives for VMWare). After that my backups were much more manageable.

CharlesS · May 8, 2010, 03:46 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

A heads-up, Charles. I have an idea what triggers this behavior in TT. It has something to do with switching the system a TM backup is linked to.

The first time I had issues after manually re-associating a Leopard TM to a new Leopard system after a MLB swap. And now it just happened again after migrating a SL TM backup to a new SL Mac via SL's built-in TM migration. In both cases TT displayed the issues I detailed above. And in both cases deleting both TT's cache folder and prefs solved the issue.

Like I said, I think I've already fixed this in the latest builds. But if you'd like to beta test in order to verify that the new build is actually fixed before I let it loose in the wild, that would actually be quite helpful. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested, and I'll send you a build.