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Corrupted Local Time Machine Backups?

Hi and tnxs for reading.


I recently had the following experience, which is making me thinking about Local Time Machine Backups.


I have a MacBook Pro w Mavericks. I recently had an issue on my 40GB iPhoto Library and had to restore a previous version.

Since I was not at home (so without my Time Capsule), I firstly restored a local time machine backup of the previous day, which was created before the issue to my iPhoto Library. The old iPhoto Library was available by surfing on the local TM snapshots, however, after restore, I had the same issue: the library was corrupted. I tried a 2 days before local snapshot, without success.


Back home, I did a TM restore by using my Time Capsule TM backups, and the library is fully working, without any issue.


Since all the local backup that I tried to restore were related to dates where the iPhoto library was ok, I am wondering if there are any limitations or issues to local time machine backups.


Tnxs.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Aug 27, 2014 2:17 AM

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2 replies

Aug 27, 2014 3:23 AM in response to Jet787

When you say "local" backups, do you mean backing up onto a local external disk (as opposed to a network one), or do you mean Apple's local backup onto the same disk as the data.


I dont think that either sort of local backups are inherently any "worse" than Time Capsule backups. They are essentially the same thing, except that the TC version stores the data slightly differently, using a sparse bundle disk image. (Anecdotally, networked backups using disk images can have some problems that local backups don't.)


I would certainly Verify your hard drive, to check that there are no problems. It's more likely though that iPhoto is the cause, as its Library DB structure is quite byzantine, and open to all sorts of complications.

Corrupted Local Time Machine Backups?

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