TM keeps creating new backups and erasing my old backup data!!!

same issue here - now on the 2nd instance of this. clearly its not a tc specific issue - since some of us don't have tc. i have a nas - b/u over wi-fi. back ups were fine - and then it attempted to b/u while my mbp was closed (sleeping) - low and behold the b/u is corrupt... seems suspicious. other users backing their mbp and imac to same drive are not having issues .... i think this is lion issue.

it needs to be fixed - as previous stated - what's the point of b/u's if they're being constantly deleted and re-written... and where does apple get off insisting we delete it w/ no recourse instead of just letting us start a new one and keep the old... (mine last 'recreate' took 2 days).

Bump...anyone have a fix for this? Been happening more frequently to me. I use a Synology NAS. Haven't had this problem until upgrading to Lion. I have a support ticket in with Synology as well.

I have a synology NAS as well. When i asked apple support aobut this they said that I was using a beta of DSM 3.2 but then I upgraded to the final release of DSM 3.2 and still got the issue.

This is why I'm using a time capsule for backup now and the synology DiskStation only for non-time machine related backup and storate.

Would be cool if you could inform me what synology answered, though because I actually bought the synology NAS because it was advertised to be working fine with time machine and now I have to use a time capsule…

we have qnap and cisco nas's (i am pretty sure that TM is on the cisco nas)... i moved my back up to my usd hd -- which had one on it from june... at that point it didn't make a peep and has been backing up as normal for a week now... it just continued on from june. update though - i was incorrrect and it seems that both the other macs on our network (imac and another mbp) have been getting the same error.

I've got to throw in my 2 cents....

I'm sitting here, in the midst of the .....I've lost count.....the n-th redo of my Time Machine backup.

This is really frustrating.

One of the most elegant, "it just works", backup solutions out there has been rendered completely useless for a growing number of us, it sounds like.

I do fear for Apple in the post-Steve era. I hope I'm wrong, but I think this is a taste of what's coming. In another couple of years, Apple will descend to Microsoft's brand of "how much can we torture the end user".

In the interest of doing something about it, I just posted the message below on the Apple Product Feedback site (http://www.apple.com/feedback).

If any of you have the time, the more of these complaints we generate, the better the odds that they'll fix this.

More than five times since upgrading to Lion, my NAS-based Time Machine share has become "corrupted" and had to be rebuilt from scratch, which takes a very long time, each time.

I am running a 2009 17" MBP, and have good wireless router reception.

The message I receive indicating the corruption:

"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."

This never happened to me with Snow Leopard, or Leopard before it, even though I was using the same router, NAS, and MBP.

I've been reading through forums, and have seen this problem being reported by people who are on both wireless and ethernet, using both Time Capsules and 3rd party NAS's, and different Macs (iMac's, MBP's, etc).

The one thing all reports I have seen have in common is the running of Lion.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

jrmyeh wrote:

. . .

One of the most elegant, "it just works", backup solutions out there has been rendered completely useless for a growing number of us, it sounds like.

Have you considered that many more millions of folks are using it? Perhaps the percentage with problems hasn't changed much? (Actually, it seems to have decreased.)

Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."

Note the pink box there for some possible preventive measures.

Some of the problems, however, seem to be caused by flaky NAS software. That may be related to many of the NAS makers not upgrading their firmware to work on Lion in a timely manner; instead, some seem to have rushed their updates out the door without adequate testing. You might want to see if yours has an update.

Also be advised that keeping "secondary" backups is strongly advised by many long-time and "power" users (most learned that the hard way), especially if your backups are on a network. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some suggestions.

Pondini,

Thanks for your thoughts.

The millions of folks aren't relevant in this case because the experience changed, for the worse, after the OS upgrade. If I was having problems with Leopard, SL, and Lion, then I could see this being a larger numbers = louder complaining thing, as Apple grew in market share. But this started with Lion. A software issue, not a denominator issue.

The verification process may have started with SL, but again, I was never bothered by it, and it sounds (from my relatively extensive internet searching of the topic) like a lot of other people didn't have this problem until Lion either.

I'd considered the flaky NAS explanation, and used to be a believer in that. After all, Buffalo (what I'm running) can certainly be a flaky company, with some flaky products. However, I've noticed people with all Apple hardware (Time Capsules) complaining of the same thing - even a guy with an iMac hooked to TC by ethernet. Can't blame flaky 3rd party stuff there.

My NAS is fully updated. First thing I checked.

It's hard for me not to notice the preponderance of people with this problem. Do you recall people bringing this up as much before Lion? (That wasn't that long ago, so I think the same millions would have been out there.)

Of course I keep secondary backups. CCC is a great tool. But not always convenient with a laptop (that's what Time Machine over wireless was supposed to be for us). I do CCC 1-2x/week. If it's been a couple days since my last CCC and I've been doing heavy work / file moving, that's going to be a problem if it goes belly up.

jrmyeh wrote:

. . .

The millions of folks aren't relevant in this case because the experience changed, for the worse, after the OS upgrade.

For some, by no means for the majority.

If I was having problems with Leopard, SL, and Lion, then I could see this being a larger numbers = louder complaining thing, as Apple grew in market share. But this started with Lion. A software issue, not a denominator issue.

Nobody with Leopard, or on early versions of Snow Leopard, will see that message. When their backups get corrupted, they'll see other problems. Either their backups fail or, when they need to restore from them, they find they're corrupted beyond repair. This may cause more angst, but is much preferable to that!

The verification process may have started with SL, but again, I was never bothered by it,

Most folks weren't. And still aren't.

and it sounds (from my relatively extensive internet searching of the topic) like a lot of other people didn't have this problem until Lion either.

Some did, some didn't. Nobody has any actual statistics, much less broken down by destination -- the various NAS drives, TCs, etc. And it would certainly help if Apple would tell us exactly what the problem is.

It's hard for me not to notice the preponderance of people with this problem. Do you recall people bringing this up as much before Lion? (That wasn't that long ago, so I think the same millions would have been out there.)

I have a feeling there are actually fewer posts now. There was a rash of them when Apple added the verification, which seemed fairly constant through 10.6.8, and there seem to be fewer now. But it's possible more folks are finding answers, too.

Of course I keep secondary backups.

I suspect you'd be surprised how few folks do. 😟

I checked my MBP AND TC disk with disk utility, but the disks were ok. However, I ran also verify permissions which showed some errors. After repairing disk permissions ON BOTH DISKS, backups have been good for several months. I hope this is an answer for the backup problem.

@mwaltari,

Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm a little cynical - losing one's backup image integrity "feels" like something more fundamental than a permissions problem (take this for what it is - the feeling of one who isn't a professional IT person). But...maybe you're on to something.

One question - although I can mount my TM sparsebundle image and run "verify disk" on it, DU will not allow me to verify/repair permissions on the image. I am using a Buffalo NAS, not a TC, which may explain this. Did you use any special steps?

@Pondini,

I wish I could be as circumspect about this as you, but at the end of the day, it was supposed to "just work", and it decidedly doesn't. Even though I'm doing what I did all along (since Leopard).

And, really...if TM, like Laverne and Shirley's TV reception, only works if you stand on one foot while holding the other end of the piece of aluminum foil attached to the attena to your ear....then it's useless, and certainly not as advertised.

Bottom line - Apple's not paying us to trouble shoot their product. We paid them for a working product.

I did it when connected to TC with ethernet. Anyway, if you need to start fresh with a backup, do first the repair permissions on you computer HD. There might be some files that need it, thus causing the trouble.

This is not Lion specific only, since I had this with my old MacBook with SnowLeopard two days before trading it in. I was very frustrated in the beginning too, but now everything regarding backup is working smooth again.

good luck!

mikko

jrmyeh wrote:

. . .

One question - although I can mount my TM sparsebundle image and run "verify disk" on it, DU will not allow me to verify/repair permissions on the image.

That's correct. Repair Permissions only fixes permissions on volumes with OSX installed, and only on things installed by OSX or the OSX installer. See About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature

I wish I could be as circumspect about this as you, but at the end of the day, it was supposed to "just work", and it decidedly doesn't. Even though I'm doing what I did all along (since Leopard).

It does work for most users, but nothing works for everybody in every circumstance. Look at any forum for any hardware or software product.

Bottom line - Apple's not paying us to trouble shoot their product. We paid them for a working product.

Your mind is clearly made up. So by all means use something else.

And by the way, I also use CCC. It's a very good product, but not perfect, either. I've had it fail, as have some others. (It's actually failed me more often than TM, but neither was common.)

Let us know when you find the perfect app. I've been looking for one for over 50 years (including the ones I wrote 😉 ).

I too am having this same issue. I have a LaCie hard drive hooked up to an Airport Extreme Base Station. LaCie says it's time machine compatible and time machine allows me to select and use it, so everything should be working. It used to happen about every 6 months and after installing Lion, the frequency went up to about every 2 weeks (Lion is also noticeably less responsive than Leopard was when TimeMachine is doing the backups). I like the concept of keeping archived versions and being able to restore a new hard drive or computer from time machine, but with the current reliability, time machine is essentially useless. NAS or whatever issues aside, the point to time machine is that it "just works". Now I'm going to go find one that does.

Jon Ruiz wrote:

I too am having this same issue. I have a LaCie hard drive hooked up to an Airport Extreme Base Station.

While that configuration does work, to some degree, for some folks, it is often unreliable and is not supported by Apple. See
Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

As noted there, the backups tend to get corrupted, and either TM says it can't back up, or you get the message that it has to start over, or, in extremis, you need them but they're unreadable.

In my case, it will usually be fine for several months before corruption occurs, but other times it happens after a couple of weeks.

But I've never had a problem backing-up to a directly-connected USB or F/W drive (since the early days of Leopard). The problem is the Airport Extreme, not Time Machine or the HD.