No hourly backups on time machine, despite its setup!

Question

Level 1

0 points

No hourly backups on time machine, despite its setup!

Hi,

Yesterday my version of MS word for mac 2011 (v.14.5.3) locked up, after an hour of finding other things to do I reluctantly forced a close. I discovered on rebooting that the manic writing I had been engaged in for about three hour before it locked up was lost as I had of course in my enthusiasm forgotten to regularly hit the save button. Ho hum.... Not a problem I thought, there will be the option to save the word restore version - no such luck (I need to sort this in word). Still I think, not a problem, I have time machine which clearly states that it makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, so I can at least get some of my words back - but I discover NO it does not have hourly backups. 😢

Going backwards from the NOW backup (29 July) the next backup is from seven days ago (22 July) so even the daily backup for the past month is not functioning (not that it would help much on this occasion).

This is the first time that I have had to call on the possibility of a time machine backup and I am not impressed!

My computer is on all day and always connected (via Wifi) to a 2TB timeport time capsule where the backups are stored. My imac is running OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks).

Has anyone experienced missing hourly and / or weekly backups, or similar with their time machine backups?

More importantly, has anyone had a similar issue and discovered a solution?

MechBird

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), none

Posted on Jul 29, 2015 4:19 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,126 points

Jul 29, 2015 4:06 PM in response to MechBird

Open Time Machine Preferences... and determine if any helpful information appears.

If not, you will need to perform some investigation by examining your system's log files. To do that,

Find the Console app - it is in your Utilities folder and looks like this

You can find it by selecting Utilities from the Finder's Go menu.

Open Console.

If the log list column on the left is not already displayed, show the log list by selecting Show Log List from Console's View menu.

Locate system.log in the list and select it. Many date and time-stamped entries will appear, hundreds of them, and you must find the entries relevant to your Mac's problem.

To do that type the words backupd in the Filter field at the upper right of the Console window. That will cause all log entries to be hidden, except for the entries containing those words.

Copy and paste those log entries in a reply. If hundreds of the same repetitive messages appear, please edit them before posting.

Most of the entries will be cryptic but will contain information you might consider personal such as your Mac's name. If you do not want that information to appear, delete or obscure it when posting your reply. Leave enough information so that the entries can be deciphered.

Reply

Answer 2

MechBird Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 3, 2015 10:03 AM in response to John Galt

John,

Thank you. Would not have naturally ventured into the log as it generally looked like a foreign language to me and the sort of file that needs IT expect to interpret. However, with your guidance I was able to decipher some of the system log text.

As far as I can ascertain from trawling through the log, time machine backups seem to be working although there was an unsuccessful / uncompleted backup this morning.

So, today has several successful backups; 11h57 (took just under 4 minutes), 13h11 (took about 3 minutes), 16h17 (took about 3 minutes) and 17h17 (took less than 2 minutes).

If I think about how I have utilised the iMac today; I started use at about 10:30, stopped at about 13h30 and started again about 16h00 until now.

So, it seems to initiate a backup every hour if the system is actively being used, although it may not be at the same minutes past each hour because of what ever tasks are / or are not being performed.

I popped into time machine and note that it has daily backups since 28th / 29th July (except for days when it was not used).

So, it seems to be working just not quite as regimented as I might have expected and maybe I was just unlucky last week that it had a hiccup (although being a computer system it should not really be influenced by hiccups!)

Here is the log detail for the unsuccessful backup (I have removed my iMac's name):

Aug 3 10:27:31 imac.lan com.apple.backupd[1717]: Starting automatic backup

Aug 3 10:27:31 imac.lan com.apple.backupd[1717]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://%20;AUTH=SRP@%20AirPort%20Time%20Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Data

Aug 3 10:27:42 imac.lan com.apple.backupd[1717]: Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Data using URL: afp://%20;AUTH=SRP@%20AirPort%20Time%20Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Data

Aug 3 10:32:08 backupd[264]: Property list invalid for format: 200 (property lists cannot contain NULL)

Aug 3 10:33:06 backupd[264]: Property list invalid for format: 200 (property lists cannot contain NULL)

Aug 3 11:57:50 apple.backupd[480]: Starting automatic backup

The difference I note from this and the successful backups is that the above states 'iMac.lan' rather than 'iMac.local' but I have no idea what that might mean for the backing up process.

Any further thoughts?

Dolores

Reply

Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

141,126 points

Aug 3, 2015 1:33 PM in response to MechBird

The behavior you describe is correct. Time Machine backs up once an hour, but it won't do anything if no information has changed.

I don't have an explanation for the lack of relevant backupd log entries in that excerpt. There ought to be more, indicating "will copy...", "copied xxx items" etc and ending with "Backup completed successfully." However, network backup destinations such as Time Machine can disappear unexpectedly for a variety of reasons — Time Machine is designed to cope with that phenomenon — so that alone may not be reason for concern.

For example, here is one complete backup excerpt from a few days ago. It was backing up to a directly connected drive and is representative of a "normal" backup:

Jul 30 20:24:30 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Starting manual backup

Jul 30 20:24:32 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Backing up to /dev/disk2s2: /Volumes/MBackup/Backups.backupdb

Jul 30 20:27:49 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Will copy (1.63 GB) from Macintosh HD

Jul 30 20:27:50 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Found 34550 files (1.69 GB) needing backup

Jul 30 20:27:52 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: 4.91 GB required (including padding), 38.9 GB available

Jul 30 20:40:31 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Copied 35979 items (1.11 GB) from volume Macintosh HD. Linked 61355.

Jul 30 20:41:17 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Created new backup: 2015-07-30-204115

Jul 30 20:41:18 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Copying OS X Recovery set

Jul 30 20:41:57 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Starting post-backup thinning

Jul 30 20:42:39 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Deleted /Volumes/MBackup/Backups.backupdb/MacBookJ05/2015-05-19-221701 (79 MB)

Jul 30 20:59:14 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Deleted /Volumes/MBackup/Backups.backupdb/MacBookJ05/2015-06-16-081314 (1.12 GB)

Jul 30 20:59:14 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Post-backup thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed

Jul 30 20:59:16 MacBookJ05.local com.apple.backupd[320]: Backup completed successfully.

Now that you know how to use Console and filter for backupd, peruse it once in a while to become familiar with what is normal, and what may not be. Bear in mind backupd may log errors that are completely innocuous (e.g "property lists cannot contain NULL") and generally there is no reason for concern unless and until Time Machine informs you with a dialog box.

As for the Mac.lan vs. Mac.local: A Mac's network name can change, and is probably nothing to be concerned about. I will determine what happens with a different Mac that backs up to both local drives and Time Capsule drives, and will let you know what I determine.

Reply