Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > The Official Time Machine Q&A Thread

The Official Time Machine Q&A Thread (Page 4)
Thread Tools
Gankdawg
Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Pacific Northwest
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 4, 2008, 08:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - View Post
The beauty of Time Machine is that it's so unobtrusive and transparent.
True, but some people just want to know it's happening.

How about a menu bar item like iSync's?
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 5, 2008, 12:47 AM
 
Originally Posted by forumhound View Post
As an aside, I find it interesting there is no real documentation on how this thing works, or if there is, it's hidden on the web somewhere. This thread was the closest thing I could find in google. But even in this thread, there does not seem to much clarity on how this app really works. Understanding exactly what's going on and when would be helpful in troubleshooting, no? Error message explanations would be nice too. The help file for TM is just insane, have u noticed? How about this one:
There are a lot of articles out there. Just google: One, Two, etc.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
Simon
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: in front of my Mac
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 5, 2008, 03:35 AM
 
Originally Posted by Gankdawg View Post
True, but some people just want to know it's happening.
Indeed, and those people (should) know that they need to look at
/var/log/system.log
because that's where TM tells you exactly what it's doing.
( Last edited by Simon; Feb 5, 2008 at 03:43 AM. )
     
Gankdawg
Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Pacific Northwest
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 5, 2008, 11:00 AM
 
Originally Posted by Simon View Post
Indeed, and those people (should) know that they need to look at
/var/log/system.log
because that's where TM tells you exactly what it's doing.
I understand what you are saying, but what I'm saying is a visual indicator, perhaps a menubar item like Sync or maybe a throbbing TM icon in the dock.
     
Simon
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: in front of my Mac
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 5, 2008, 12:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Gankdawg View Post
I understand what you are saying, but what I'm saying is a visual indicator, perhaps a menubar item like Sync or maybe a throbbing TM icon in the dock.
System Prefs > Time Machine will give you exactly that.

And once we get the 10.5.2 update there will be a menu extra that will you can use as a TM indicator:

     
forumhound
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Kathmandu Nepal
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 05:02 AM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - View Post
The icon next to the Time Machine HD in Finder is spinning when Time Machine is doing it's job. Apart from that, why would you want to know? The beauty of Time Machine is that it's so unobtrusive and transparent.
Hi Eric LOL the unobtrusiveness bit. TM is nothing like that here. It works, but causes all kindas slow downs and spinning balls and hangs the usb drive now and then, nothing unexpected from a new product however. But I really don't like the fact that the icon is not animated like all my other apps, one glance to the dashboard and i know what's running and what's not...well, all I care to know. I want to be able to look across the board and see what's running when the little ball starts spinning. BUT HEY, 10.5.2 fixed it with the new menu bar icon YES! gotta love apple. Updates that visually improve things

Dead MBP 2.2 4gig / New Aluminum iMacs / "Old" iPhones / 1st Gen Ipod Shuffle
     
Appleman
Mac Elite
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: France
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 05:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by plamparello View Post
What is the point of having it when it doesn't internally store changes....
Your harddisk turns dead, but happily you have stored your changes internally!
     
forumhound
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Kathmandu Nepal
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 06:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by Appleman View Post
Your harddisk turns dead, but happily you have stored your changes internally!
LOL - funny one. I've started to just do backups when I want to, but turning off TM in the system prefs and using the Back Up Now click. Its the way I have always done backups anyway (manually) and I'm fine with that..,wonder if that breaks the TM paradigm.

Dead MBP 2.2 4gig / New Aluminum iMacs / "Old" iPhones / 1st Gen Ipod Shuffle
     
schalliol
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Carmel, IN, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 08:55 AM
 
Since there's the dock TM icon, it would've been nice to have an option for that icon to change instead of having to add a separate menu bar. Even adding a dot/triangle under TM's dock icon would do it.
iMac Late '15 5K 27" 4.0 Quad i7 24/512GB SSD OWC ThunderDock 2 Blu-Ray ±RW MBP '14 Retina 15" 2.6 16/1TB iPhone 7+ 128 Jet Black iPad Pro 128 + Cellular

FOR SALE: MP '06 Yosemite 8x3.0 24/240GB SSD RAID 0, 240GB SSD, 1.5TB HDD RAID 0, 1TB HDD, Blu-Ray±RW, Radeon HD 5770
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 09:02 AM
 
Do you mean you would want the TM menulet to take you straight to Time Machine instead of showing a menu? If so, that would be undesirable from a user interface consistency point of view, since no other menu acts like that.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 09:08 AM
 
Even though I love Leopard (see my "verdict" thread) I have to say that the lack of configure-ability of Time Machine is really, plainly dumb. I won't use the feature until I can, at the very least, have access to a list of included/excluded items. I simply don't want to devote so much space on my backup drive to non-essential files that are easily replaced. I imagine we won't see that feature until 10.6, but Apple did surprise me by fixing Stacks so I guess anything is possible.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
forumhound
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Kathmandu Nepal
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 11:56 AM
 
Originally Posted by schalliol View Post
Since there's the dock TM icon, it would've been nice to have an option for that icon to change instead of having to add a separate menu bar. Even adding a dot/triangle under TM's dock icon would do it.
I was surprised by this as well, why didn't apple just make the time machine doc icon behave like all others (blob indicator), but perhaps cause everyone would have to delete the doc icon and add a fresh one to get the effect. The menulet is pretty cool, and makes sense to me.

Dead MBP 2.2 4gig / New Aluminum iMacs / "Old" iPhones / 1st Gen Ipod Shuffle
     
TETENAL
Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: FFM
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 11:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Even though I love Leopard (see my "verdict" thread) I have to say that the lack of configure-ability of Time Machine is really, plainly dumb. I won't use the feature until I can, at the very least, have access to a list of included/excluded items. I simply don't want to devote so much space on my backup drive to non-essential files that are easily replaced.
You can exclude items in the Time Machine system preferences.
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 12:01 PM
 
I must have missed that entirely. Thank you very much for the info, Tetenal.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Appleman
Mac Elite
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: France
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2008, 11:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
I must have missed that entirely. Thank you very much for the info, Tetenal.
hm, strange, as that is the very first thing you do when you back up, plus so many people tried to start with backing up only one file for instance in order to see why Time Machine was freaking out. Anyway, I am happy that you know now ;-)
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 01:37 AM
 
Yeah, even though I had heard about exclusions, I was confused because I just saw the option to select a drive and no other settings. Alas, Time Machine seems confused on my G5. It thought my backup drive was my source drive (or perhaps it just says that whenever it finds a drive that isn't completely empty), and then it told me I lacked space for the backup when I know I have enough.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Appleman
Mac Elite
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: France
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 01:53 AM
 
TM still has a way to go imho
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 12:50 PM
 
Just like other major new additions to the OS, TM is half baked. FileVault comes to mind as a previous example - I wonder if it has been improved enough to be safe for general use.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 02:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Just like other major new additions to the OS, TM is half baked.
I don't think it's half-baked. It's a particular backup implementation, and it has plusses and minuses. It's not a replacement for something like a big Retrospect network install which backs up 100 stations, and it doesn't do bootable clones like SuperDuper. But for its intended purpose--easy and relatively simple home backups--I have no complaints.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
besson3c
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 03:06 PM
 
It is half-baked. In order for me to consider it fully baked, it should:

- support backups to network volumes, and preferably non-AFP volumes. There is partial support there in creating a sparse disk image on the network volume, this approach should work on SSHfs, Samba, NFS, and other volumes too
- support keeping a backup set within a certain total size for those that don't want to devote their entire backup volume solely for TM
- work out all of the fsevents bugs that results in super slow backups, or:
- support how often certain areas of your home directory get backed up
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 03:15 PM
 
Yup. I wish Apple would open up an official channel of communication between us and the OS X team so that we could directly communicate our suggestions to them, but I'm just dreaming here.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 05:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
It is half-baked. In order for me to consider it fully baked, it should:

- support backups to network volumes, and preferably non-AFP volumes. There is partial support there in creating a sparse disk image on the network volume, this approach should work on SSHfs, Samba, NFS, and other volumes too
- support keeping a backup set within a certain total size for those that don't want to devote their entire backup volume solely for TM
- work out all of the fsevents bugs that results in super slow backups, or:
- support how often certain areas of your home directory get backed up
Then you don't want Time Machine; it is designed to backup home machines. Spend the money and get Retrospect or other backup software if you have more complex needs.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 05:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett View Post
Then you don't want Time Machine; it is designed to backup home machines. Spend the money and get Retrospect or other backup software if you have more complex needs.
That's a valid point, Don. But for many of us Time Machine isn't even doing the limited tasks it's supposed to do; that's half-baked.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 06:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
That's a valid point, Don. But for many of us Time Machine isn't even doing the limited tasks it's supposed to do; that's half-baked.
Are you sure it's many of you? Taking a sample from this board is hardly a sample from the general population of Mac users.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
Simon
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: in front of my Mac
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 14, 2008, 07:43 PM
 
TM is supposed to automatically make incremental backups of your disk to another partition. For a large majority of users it does that just fine.
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 27, 2008, 05:47 AM
 
Well, my bragging finally came around and bit me on the butt, as Time Machine has, apparently, completely lost its mind on my machine. I back up to an external FW800 drive, and most of the time the process is quick. I have about half of the stuff on my drive excluded--game files and the like I can easily reload from DVD, the VM image for my copy of Virtual PC, some music I back up myself--so I have about 64 GB of stuff on my internal drive which Time Machine has to back up.

TM started to backup at 23:45, and, for some reason, decided it needed to back up 4.6 GB of data, which was weird, as I didn't make changes to 4.6 GB of data in an hour. But I let it run. It went through the first 3.6 GB very quickly, and then became very slow on the last GB. After an hour I checked on its progress using Activity Monitor and saw it was writing a few hundred K a second, with most of the CPU being taken up by mds. After an hour and a half, with the TM progress bar seeming stuck on having backed up 4.7 GB of 4.7 GB (not the 4.6 GB it originally said) I cancelled the backup.

Then it got really strange: mds stayed stuck on using all available cpu, and the machine continued to write to the external drive. It was also rapidly filling up space on the internal drive, which made no sense. I think it was writing to a huge log file, gut I was unable to trace it. After almost two hours I restarted the machine and turned TM off on restart. mds continued to spike the cpu meter in Activity Monitor, and the machine continued to fill up the internal drive. The only way I was able to stop it was to shut down, turn off the external drive and restart. Now I have my machine back.

I have one more bit of data which I will post in the hopes it may help someone answer this issue. If I look at my log files, I see something like this:

Feb 24 04:02:43 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Starting standard backup
Feb 24 04:02:43 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Backing up to: /Volumes/Desktop Backup/Backups.backupdb
Feb 24 04:02:46 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.31 GB requested (including padding), 478.90 GB available
Feb 24 04:03:14 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Copied 986 files (10.2 MB) from volume Wintermoot.
Feb 24 04:03:19 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Copied 998 files (10.2 MB) from volume Feezmoe.
Feb 24 04:03:21 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.30 GB requested (including padding), 478.88 GB available
Feb 24 04:03:32 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Copied 699 files (3 KB) from volume Wintermoot.
Feb 24 04:03:37 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Copied 711 files (3 KB) from volume Feezmoe.
Feb 24 04:03:40 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 24 04:03:48 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Deleted backup /Volumes/Desktop Backup/Backups.backupdb/Feezmoe/2008-02-23-033508: 478.92 GB now available
Feb 24 04:03:48 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Feb 24 04:03:48 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd41352: Backup completed successfully.

To explain, I have two internal drives, Wintermoot and Feezmoe. Feezmoe is a storage drive. It changes it's contents once in a blue moon, and I haven't added anything to it in weeks. Wintermoot is the main, internal drive on which the system and all my apps are installed. However, looking at the logs, it seems as if TM is backing up from Feezmoe, even though nothing has changes, and it seems it always backs up an amount identical to the amount it backed up from Wintermoot. I don't know what this means.

Does anyone have any idea what happened? Does anyone know why TM would decide to back up 4.7 GB of data, when there's no way that much data changed? Does anyone know why mds seemed to need to reindex everything? Is this something which could be fixed by reformatting my TM drive and starting the whole process over?
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 4, 2008, 09:27 PM
 
Not finding any other solution, I wiped and repartitioned the drive, trashed my Time Machine prefs and started from scratch.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
Caesar2099
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Bronx, NY
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 18, 2008, 09:07 AM
 


My "Macintosh HD" is now a TM drive??? I have Time Machine set up to back to my "Lacie Disk" why does my internal HD have the TM drive icon? How would I go about fixing this?

Is my computer making backups to itself?
     
Helmling
Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2005
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 19, 2008, 04:28 PM
 
Ok, I just got my Time Capsule and I just started up Time Machine to do my first back-up on my Macbook...so why is there a mounted drive of "Backup of HD" on my desktop?!? Will that always appear when TM is running? Please say no.
     
frdmfghtr
Senior User
Join Date: Nov 2005
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 19, 2008, 10:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Ok, I just got my Time Capsule and I just started up Time Machine to do my first back-up on my Macbook...so why is there a mounted drive of "Backup of HD" on my desktop?!? Will that always appear when TM is running? Please say no.
You could turn off the option to show external drives on the desktop via the Finder's preferences.
     
youngy
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jan 2008
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 23, 2008, 07:40 AM
 
I've had a similar issue as Caesar2009 since upgrading to 10.5.2. I can set my Lacie drive to be the tm drive and all works fine but as soon as I unplug the drive tm assumes my internal hard drive is the tm drive and marks it as such. However when it tries to backup it fails saying it can't find the drive. I've; reapplied the 10.5.2 update, deleted the tm prefs file but no change. Any suggestions?
     
turtle777
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 23, 2008, 11:13 PM
 
Ok, so for anyone who has done a FULL RESTORE from TimeMachine, you might run into the following issue:

After the restore and reboot, TimeMachine will not recognize your old snapshots and want to start from scratch, backing up your entire HD. Often, there is not enough space left to do so, because the old snapshots are still on the TM drive, just not recognized.

Well, there is a fix that worked for me. A lot of voodoo and magic does the trick.

But Apple, WTF were you thinking ?

This needs to be fixed.

-t
     
turtle777
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 23, 2008, 11:35 PM
 
Update: sh!t, still didn't work

Now I need to start from scratch, and lose all my old snapshots.

So here is what happened, may it be a warning to future generations.

When you do a rollback with TM, so have two options:

2) Don't format the destination HD, let TM just overwrite the files that need to be changed for the rollback
+ saves capacity on TM drive upon resuming normal operation
- rollback can take forever, in my case it got stuck and wouldn't proceed.
Only option was to format the destination HD first (option 2)

2) format the destination HD first, then let TM copy the previous state.
+ faster (?)
- the new copy will be completely backed up next time TM will run, so all your data is essentially backed up TWICE.

-t
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 24, 2008, 03:13 AM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
This needs to be fixed.

-t
My experience with TM is that, when it works, it's great. But when it screws up in does it in a really big way.

My latest experience: I had to move my X-Plane folder from several levels down to / on my internal drive in order for a plugin to recognize some data. It's not a big deal, really, just a bug in the plugin. I figured TM would copy the folder again, even though nothing changed. The folder is 59GB, but 54GB of that is terrain data which I have on DVD, so it's excluded from TM backups. For those playing along at home, that leaves about 5GB to back up. When TM decides to back it up, it decided to needs to back up 20GB of data, which makes no sense. Even more, it takes forever. I don't actually know how long it took, as I left for a bike ride after it had been backing up for over an hour, and it was done when I came back an hour and a half later.

It's obvious to me that TM is very, very version 1.0 software, and more than once I've thought about just turning it off and using SuperDuper.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
turtle777
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 24, 2008, 10:34 AM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett View Post
It's obvious to me that TM is very, very version 1.0 software, and more than once I've thought about just turning it off and using SuperDuper.
I agree it's very 1.0, maybe more like 0.9.

But the alternatives are not better. Even if I have to start from scratch with TM after a full restore (like I just had to), it's still not worse than a clone. With TM, I at least get the upside potential of a true incremental backup. By cloning a disk, I rule that out for sure.

-t
     
Don Pickett
Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Mar 24, 2008, 11:45 AM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
I agree it's very 1.0, maybe more like 0.9.

But the alternatives are not better. Even if I have to start from scratch with TM after a full restore (like I just had to), it's still not worse than a clone. With TM, I at least get the upside potential of a true incremental backup. By cloning a disk, I rule that out for sure.

-t
True. At the moment TM is on it's last chance. If it freaks out on me again I will kill it and use SuperDuper. True, I won't have incremental backups, but I also won't wonder why my machine is using 100% CPU for two hours to backup 30MB of files.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
benville
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Toronto
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jul 10, 2008, 12:28 PM
 
I need to upgrade my system. I'm still on Tiger. I'm loving the new features of the Leopard, the widgets, Time Machine and overall useability. Not to mention the beautiful screen.
     
jretzner
Forum Regular
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 4, 2008, 10:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett View Post
It's obvious to me that TM is very, very version 1.0 software, and more than once I've thought about just turning it off and using SuperDuper.
I agree it's very 1.0, maybe more like 0.9.

But the alternatives are not better. Even if I have to start from scratch with TM after a full restore (like I just had to), it's still not worse than a clone. With TM, I at least get the upside potential of a true incremental backup. By cloning a disk, I rule that out for sure.
After loosing everything via incorrectly using SuperSuper I now have two external HDs. One is nearly the same size as my internal HD. I use SuperDuper (correctly I hope) on that external HD. The other is a 500 gig external HD which I am using for TM. When the unthinkable happens again I hope having two backups will make life a bit easier.
     
Simon
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: in front of my Mac
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 5, 2008, 04:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by jretzner View Post
After loosing everything via incorrectly using SuperSuper I now have two external HDs. One is nearly the same size as my internal HD. I use SuperDuper (correctly I hope) on that external HD. The other is a 500 gig external HD which I am using for TM. When the unthinkable happens again I hope having two backups will make life a bit easier.
You could also just throw SuperDuper out of the window and instead use Apple's built-in cloning tool (Disk Utility > Restore). There's nothing to screw up there. It makes perfect (and of course bootable) clones with one click and it is very reliable.
     
jretzner
Forum Regular
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 5, 2008, 08:16 PM
 
After loosing everything via incorrectly using SuperSuper
How can I check to see if my SuperDuper cloning is actually doing a legitimate backup without erasing something else to verify?
     
Simon
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: in front of my Mac
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 6, 2008, 02:26 AM
 
Boot from the backup. Open you apps, documents, etc.
     
jretzner
Forum Regular
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 7, 2008, 12:12 AM
 
How can I check to see if my SuperDuper cloning is actually doing a legitimate backup without erasing something else to verify?
Thanks! It worked. I'll sleep much better knowing that "I'm doing it correctly this time."

Another question: I tried to insert an image (photo of "About This Mac") with popup showing that photo. Obviously I couldn't figure out how to do it. Some help please!!!
( Last edited by jretzner; Aug 7, 2008 at 12:21 AM. Reason: Addition)
     
Eug
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Caught in a web of deceit.
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Sep 2, 2008, 08:53 PM
 
Bah! I've been getting this Time Machine Backup Error repeatedly. I wonder if I should repartition and format, but Disk Utility doesn't seem to think it's a FAT32 drive like it does for him.
     
kamina
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jun 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 3, 2008, 01:38 AM
 
So has anyone heard of any real problems when using timemachine with an unsupported nas that supports afp, and not apples products (real as in something that would not exist in a supported setup)?
     
schalliol
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Carmel, IN, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 3, 2008, 10:09 AM
 
I will say that I've been just fine with SMB/CIFS and AFP. That protocol shouldn't be an issue.
iMac Late '15 5K 27" 4.0 Quad i7 24/512GB SSD OWC ThunderDock 2 Blu-Ray ±RW MBP '14 Retina 15" 2.6 16/1TB iPhone 7+ 128 Jet Black iPad Pro 128 + Cellular

FOR SALE: MP '06 Yosemite 8x3.0 24/240GB SSD RAID 0, 240GB SSD, 1.5TB HDD RAID 0, 1TB HDD, Blu-Ray±RW, Radeon HD 5770
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 3, 2008, 10:25 AM
 
I just set up a full-time dedicated TM eSATA drive, and I'm really happy with it. I feel much more protected. But Apple must fix the Time Machine Restore and backup continuation bug.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
QSilver
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chicago
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 3, 2008, 12:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by kamina View Post
So has anyone heard of any real problems when using timemachine with an unsupported nas that supports afp, and not apples products (real as in something that would not exist in a supported setup)?
I've been running Time Machine for about a month now, backing up to a 500GB LaCie etherdisk mini that's been set up as network-attached storage (NAS). Technically, Apple does not support this set-up; however, after following the directions at http://www.readynas.com/?p=253, I was up and running.

Pros:
It works just as you'd expect.

Cons:
The first backup took more than 24 hours.
Larger backups are slow.


For some reason, I had a week's worth of backups that were incredibly slow, even though they were small. I tried re-booting my MBP, the LaCie, the entire network. Nothing seemed to help. It's running fine now, but I have no idea what caused this temporary issue.

QS
     
schalliol
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Carmel, IN, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 3, 2008, 01:21 PM
 
I've found initial backups even on another hard drive on a same tower Mac can take a very long time, so I'm not necessarily sure that it has anything to do with your configuration.
iMac Late '15 5K 27" 4.0 Quad i7 24/512GB SSD OWC ThunderDock 2 Blu-Ray ±RW MBP '14 Retina 15" 2.6 16/1TB iPhone 7+ 128 Jet Black iPad Pro 128 + Cellular

FOR SALE: MP '06 Yosemite 8x3.0 24/240GB SSD RAID 0, 240GB SSD, 1.5TB HDD RAID 0, 1TB HDD, Blu-Ray±RW, Radeon HD 5770
     
Big Mac
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 6, 2008, 04:00 PM
 
Can anyone tell me if I can put my G5 in TDM without disrupting Time Machine?

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Hal Itosis
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Mar 2004
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Nov 6, 2008, 04:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Can anyone tell me if I can put my G5 in TDM without disrupting Time Machine?
Does that post (or your others in this thread) contain enough info for readers to go on?
Also, what is the detailed meaning and/or working definition of "disrupting" in this case?

It's not clear (to me anyway) what exactly the question/situation is.
-HI-
     
 
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:32 PM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,