Time Machine Frequent "Start New Backup"

Hello again

Well I posted on Aug 22 after performing the time machine sparse bundle fix. It has been running for about 18 days but now is asking to redo the whole backup after the verification failed. Its an improvement but not sure what to do now. Might go back to Super Super as that was great and I am not bothered about historical backups.

I decided to buy a Airport Wifi station and changed the TimeMachine setting to lock documents after last edit to 1 month (standard 2 weeks if I remember right) made a whole new TimeMachine backup (again) and now it's still working for 17 days, a record for me. Let's see how long it will last, I hope this might have made a difference, I still don't trust it though. Especially because my girlfriends MacBook never had problems with standard settings and also not with the old Wifi station (not apple), as I mentioned in my previous post.

I'll keep you up to date.

Well, I spoke with Apple Care today. Here is what I was told came from engineering:

1) There is no fix for out-of-synch Time Capsules. The workaround is to point TM to the TC which has the data you want to retreive (see my previous posts for what this is in reference to and how to do it)

2) Corrupted sparsebundles are caused "any interruption" during a FIRST (total) backup. This interruption can be caused by the computer going to sleep during this total backup. The damage to the sparsebundle may not become apparant untill a long time in the future (perhaps when the damaged file is re-accessed for update?), at which point it is detected and a new backup with loss of history becomes necessary. The only work-around offered was to disable timed sleep when performing a total backup. Computer sleep is the most likely cause of this I was told. It would seem there is a problem with TM and sleep mode in OSX.

Apple is aparantly aware of this, but did not explicitly lable it as a bug. Perhaps it will be fixed in a future update.

EDIT: P.S. I was told that all the log data, and what was observed by the level2 tech was indicative of "correct behavior".

Why are you all wasting your time trying to fix this? For forty bucks Carbon Copy Cloner will do a far superior job over cable and wifi from mulitple macs with differeing versios of OS X. Time Machine is the Siri of OS X - free rubbish.

I've got three 2 x 2TB in an AEBS via a USB hub backing up a G5 (that's right, a G5 running 10.5) via ethernet and a MBP running 10.7.4 via wifi that's also got a 1TB ExHDD connected with FW800. Everything is backed up to one of the 2TB drives every hour and that's CLONED everynight to the other 2TB.

Actually, I haven't even paid for CCC yet because I'm still on the 30 day trial. It rox, TM ***.

That is all.

Carbon Copy Cloner just creates an image of the disk. Time Machine keeps multiple versions of your files, allowing you restore different versions of different files if you want to. They're not the same thing. Many of us like the Time Machine functionality, which is why we want to get it fixed. Suggesting Carbon Copy Cloner, or Super Duper or any other disk mirroring software is not really helpful.

I don't know how you can give a fair review when you are only on a trial.

You say that Carbon Copy Cloner will do a far superior job over cable and wifi from multiple macs but Time Machine does a great job over cable. If I was using cable I would use Time Machine over anything. I actually have a G5 using Time Machine via cable with no issues. The issue for me is my MacBook and wifi.

I used to use Super Duper for cloned backups and really liked it but it was slow over wifi and I haven't used it since. I use Time Machine and apart from the verification problem it was great. Just turn it on and select the backup location and away you go.

Because of the wifi issue I am trying to give Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner a go again. I am on the free trial of Carbon Copy Cloner at the moment. So far its taken over 20 hours to backup 45Gb out of 160Gb on my MacBook. A long, long time. I may stop it and cable it, clone and then let it do periodic backups via wifi and see how that works.

So far it doesn't seem much different to Super Duper although more confusing with the options - Temporarily archive modified and deleted items, Delete anything that doesn't exist on the source, Preserve newer files, don't delete anything. Super Duper has a few options but I just need to select Backup - all files. Simple.

The only thing I can see that CCC has over Super Duper is hourly backups.

I don't agree with your comment - free rubbish. iTunes is great, Mail works great for me. FaceTime is great to videocall my family at lunchtimes. Probably agree with Siri though but thats mainly cos I feel a bit silly asking my phone questions. But enough about that as this thread is about Time Machine. If I was on cable I would use Time Machine all the time. Why would I want to spend money?

Yes indeed. Simple example:

I have been doing a lot of ordering from Amazom, and the deliveries are sometimes hard to keep straight. I have a file on my desktop labled "deliveries". As stuff arrives and/or I get delivery dates, I simply update the file. When a delivery is made, I delete it's entry. The file can change several times a day. The ONLY way to go back in time to see what was in that file 3 days ago is with TM. TM makes a delta with links every hour, so you can go back and reterive a file the way it looked at a particular day and time.

I use this a lot! Making a disk image every hour would not only be absurd, it would eat up all my RAID in no time. TM is more than a simple backup, it's an hourly back in timemachine.

I am new to OSX have been on other UNIX systems (Solaris, SCO, HPUX, LINUX) for decades, and I have never seen anything like this available from anyone else. It's what a "backup" system should be.

Apple knows about the issues, I am certain they will be corrected.

After reading what you said:

rrichard wrote:

2) Corrupted sparsebundles are caused "any interruption" during a FIRST (total) backup.

I decided to re-do my first backup, making sure there were no interruptions. I plugged my macbook pro into AC power, ran caffeine to prevent it going to sleep, completely deleted my backup and started a new backup with time machine. Many hours later, it was done. Since then, for almost 2 weeks Time Machine has behaved itself. I thought great - this is the solution! Until yesterday, when Time Machine started telling me that it needs to start a new backup again 😟

So, I don't believe Apple when they say the sparse bundle corruption only happens during the first backup. I think it can happen at any time.

I'm hoping they fix it, because I like the functionality Time Machine offers. But until then, I'm disabling it and using something else.

mpatric wrote:

. . .

So, I don't believe Apple when they say the sparse bundle corruption only happens during the first backup. I think it can happen at any time.

Exactly. It may be more common to happen on the first backup, just because there are so many more opportunities when backing up everything rather than just a relatively few changes.

The point some are missing about the "Time Machine must create a new backup for you" message is that it's after the fact. The verification routine that detects a problem and sends that message is run periodically (usually monthly). In most cases, there's no way to tell when the damage occurred -- all you really know is, it was at at some time since the previous verification.

About the only way to pinpoint it would be to run the verification manually after every backup (hold the Alt/Option key while selecting the Time Machine icon in your menubar).

And it seems to have different causes. Some folks have it with Time Capsules, some with 3rd-party NASs, some when backing-up to a shared drive on another Mac. Others (perhaps most?) have been backing-up via network for years and have never seen the message.

Most seem to be doing at least some backups wirelessly, but in a few cases, all backups were done via Ethernet. We know power problems can cause it; and it seems pretty clear that some NASs that aren't fully compatible with Time Machine and don't handle interference or disconnections well can cause it; and it's also possible that intermittent problems with a drive might be involved, too.

All the more reason not to depend on a single backup ("all your eggs in one basket"), no matter how it was made or where it is. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question
#27 for more explanation and some recommendations.

Hi again

I am on OSX 10.7.4 and the latest software update to 10.7.5 which I am about to install. I am quite interested in one improvement that 10.7.5 mentions:

The 10.7.5 update also includes fixes that:

• Resolve an issue where icons in Launchpad may get rearranged after a restart
• Improve Wi-Fi reliability for iMac (Late 2009 and newer)
• Resolve an issue using Spotlight to search an SMB server
• Improve compatibility connecting to Active Directory servers

Although I am using a Macbook I wonder if the update will improve wifi for Mac users and help Time Machine at all.

It's certainly worth a try -- Apple does not mention every fix in the update articles; just a few of the more common or more serious ones.

I think the issue with Time Machine is somewhat fundamental. As designed, Time Machine writes to a remote sparse file that looks like a local filesystem to Mac OS. Mac is used to manage at a low level this filesystem inside the sparse file that contains backup. This is fine for physically attached drives, but managing filesystem remotely over intermittent links is prone to lead to filesystem corruption (losing connection here is similar to pulling out USB stick without properly unmounting it). Many filesystem errors can be repaired automatically, but not all. And in Time Machine configuration, when you irrepearably corrupt the filesystem, you lose all of your backups.

In contrast, most of the other backup systems that back the data to remote hosts, do it at a high level of sending files. And it is the remote host that is responsible for low level filesystem management when it receives the file.

Over intermittent link, connection problems may lead to single file corruption, or at most the current backup corruption (usually backup system verifyies that all the files in the backup is transmitted correctly before declaring backup a success and proceeding with inserting it in backup history) but previous backups that live in separate files on remote are unaffected.

And of course a sleep-enabled laptop over WiFi is the most dangerous configuration wrt losing the connection.

I've been wading through all the time machine problems posted everywhere and frankly it's not helping. I bought my macbook air to do specific work - not to fiddle under the hood. Clearly time machine won't work with anything other than a time capsule .

I really need a piece of software that I can set up backups to a Qnap NAS which will run without intervention. I also need to be able to disable time machine. Right now, even though it's switched off, it keeps kicking in and backing up to my macbook air - where there just isn't the space.

Q1. How do I uninstall Time Machine?

Q2. What's the most effective replacement to automate backups to a Qnap?

Lyonnesse wrote:

I've been wading through all the time machine problems posted everywhere and frankly it's not helping. I bought my macbook air to do specific work - not to fiddle under the hood. Clearly time machine won't work with anything other than a time capsule .

No. It works with external HDs, to a shared drive on another Mac, and for many folks, 3rd-party NAS drives.

Even some folks with QNAP NASs have it working well. Be sure it has the current version of software, and is compatible with Time Machine on the version of OSX you're running.

I also need to be able to disable time machine. Right now, even though it's switched off, it keeps kicking in and backing up to my macbook air - where there just isn't the space.

That sounds like you've used a 3rd-party app or followed some instructions elsewhere to manually alter Time Machine's default behavior. That sometimes prevents the Time Machine preferences window from controlling it.

I'm on OS-X 10.7.5. I know time machine 'works' with external HDs but there are pages of people having the same problems as me with QNAPs, and nothing appears straightforward or consistent. The qnap is not my piece of kit and it's owner is a Windows person. He wants me to find a way to rename my macbook to be consistent with what he can see on his qnap. I can't find any place to rename it, and I don't accept that is the issue since we've been able to fix the problem without renaming in the past.

I've had the mac since January and this is the 4th or 5th time it has dropped my backups. Always before we managed to get it to start up, but this was only partially satisfactory because we lost all the previous backups. Now I can't get it to backup even with a new file. I can see time machine in my file finder but it says connection failed. when I try to 'connect as' there is no response. There is no way to delete and set up the time machine again within finder. When I try to connect in Time machine it appears to do it, but after a few minutes it announces it is deleting the back-up and then creates a new backup on my hard disk.

I've not installed anything else on my mac; I've not asked it to create backups on my hard disk; It's not telling me why it won't use the qnap.

I don't want to buy a time capsule just to get something compatible. I don't want to lose all my backups every couple of months and I don't want to waste hours under the hood trying to understand why I can't oonfigure something as simple as a back-up. I just want a reliable, self-evident tool

I hear what you say about what should happen but it plainly isn't happening and I'm finding that most OSX stuff is pretty short on meaningful explanations. Right now it seems that the best option is to find a good piece of third party software that I can configure and leave to run without all these issues. I'm hoping folks can come up with some good (inexpensive) alternatives that don't require a degree in computing science