Time machine keeps losing backups

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Level 1

36 points

Time machine keeps losing backups

Time machine keeps losing backups on 10.8 machine.

I do Verify Backups or Enter Time Machine or Browse Other Time Machine Disks and all I can see is an older, concurrent machine.

While I can tell it to run a backup, and it will complete apparently successfully (and I'll be able to view it) the backups won't be there tomorrow. This makes Time Machine unusable at best.

What gives? Why are the backups vanishing?

WD MyBookLive

2010-mid MacBook Pro

This maching is also having trouble with scp, and other secure connections. But why would Time Machine report that it works, only to throw everything away?

Need help.

-Crissa

Posted on Mar 13, 2013 10:42 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Mar 13, 2013 10:46 AM in response to Crissa

Troubleshooting articles that hopefully will help:

Time Machine Troubleshooting

Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Mar 13, 2013 2:43 PM in response to Crissa

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:

tmutil listbackups | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).

Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

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Answer 3

Crissa Author

Level 1

36 points

Mar 15, 2013 8:24 AM in response to Eric Root

I'm sorry, Eric, the pondini site is really opaque.

The failure occurs without any message, no little failed icon. It just resets the time to try a little bit later, so that it never does do it. And if it does finish, upon verify, it says it needs to rebuild. No error messages to look up on the site.

Other macs have no problem using the network backup drive.

-Crissa

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Answer 4

Crissa Author

Level 1

36 points

Mar 15, 2013 8:27 AM in response to Linc Davis

Linc:

'No machine directory found for host.'

I assume this is because Time Machine currently reports 'Oldest backup: None'

I had been keeping backups from this machine for a year, when I use 'Browse Other Time Machine Disks' I can no longer see any older backups, only the other machines. Somewhere, Time Machine decided to delete the older backups, as well as the newer, corrupted ones.

-Crissa

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Mar 15, 2013 8:38 AM in response to Crissa

Backing up to a third-party network device is unsupported by Apple and unreliable. If you want network backup, use a Time Capsule or another Mac as the destination. Even then, you should also back up to a locally-attached hard drive.

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Answer 6

Crissa Author

Level 1

36 points

Mar 18, 2013 9:52 PM in response to Linc Davis

That's stupid. The NAT itself is labeled as being supported by Time Machine. Saying it isn't supported is a non-answer. If I could give you negative praise in the system, I would.

Anyhow, I have isolated the error as being on the source machine itself; 'ssh packet corrupt MAC address'

Swapping the RAM modules fixes the error, but the 'broken' modules never produce errors in testing. Weird and annoying.

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