HT204476: Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries

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PaulCommentary

Q: Backup problems due to Photos hard link strategies

Is anyone having problems with backups due to the Photos hard link strategies? My Carbon Copy Cloner backups seem to be confused and can't fit 1 TB source drive onto 1 TB backup anymore---even with Safety Net turned off.

 

Also hard to tell if Backblaze is resolving the hard links in some way and thus backing up two large files rather than one. The file sizes it indicates seems to reflect this.

Posted on May 30, 2015 6:44 AM

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Q: Backup problems due to Photos hard link strategies

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  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN May 30, 2015 9:14 AM in response to PaulCommentary
    Level 10 (84,210 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 30, 2015 9:14 AM in response to PaulCommentary

    You probably need to contact support for CCC and BB

     

    LN

  • by PaulCommentary,

    PaulCommentary PaulCommentary May 31, 2015 8:58 PM in response to PaulCommentary
    Level 1 (49 points)
    May 31, 2015 8:58 PM in response to PaulCommentary

    I believe I have found a workaround for problems with backups involving Photos Library, especially to local external drives using Carbon Copy Cloner.

     

    The workaround is to disconnect your Mac from the internet before running the backup. I'm guessing, but I think that the Photos Library stays "open" in some weird way, even when the Photos App is not running. This may be due to the hard link strategy.

     

    Anyways, I actually bought an external SSD for backups to speed troubleshooting. Getting to the bottom of this and identifying the correlation took Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

     

    Hope this helps someone else. Please comment if you are encountering this problem and the solution also works for you. I'm very happy to have Photos and backups coexisting.

     

    For the record, I am using CCC 4.1.3 and I've reported the issue and fix to Bombich (the CCC company).

  • by PaulCommentary,Solvedanswer

    PaulCommentary PaulCommentary Jun 1, 2015 6:22 PM in response to PaulCommentary
    Level 1 (49 points)
    Jun 1, 2015 6:22 PM in response to PaulCommentary

    A further update.

     

    I sent my logs to Bombich software and they show that the problem was not between Photos and CCC, but rather with File Transporter software update and CCC.  We've tested that hypothesis and it proves true. Of course turning off the network connection disconnects from File Transporter and so it is a workaround.

     

    I expect either or both companies will fix this for everyone in the near future.

     

    Hope this helps anyone else having the same set of circumstances and resulting problems. If I had noticed the problem on a weekday, it might have been resolved much more quickly, as Bombich was quite responsive come Monday.