Yes, folks, here's another one of these ?'s again. I have been using a local USB drive for Time Machine for quite some time now, and use another one for a bootable clone via CCC. Works like a charm, until recently...
What I just changed recently with my MacBook, was to set it up in a Henge Dock which uses a USB extension cable on each of the MacBooks ports, then each of those goes through a powered USB hub. And now I am driving a nice 1600x1200 20" display off the MacBook.
The CCC backup continues to work fine, but Time Machine has been failing after a few hundred MB copied. I found some of the tips from old threads here on how to reset Time Machine, deleting the .plist preference file, shut down, reboot, re-formatted the drive with a 1-pass zero erase. Failed again. Checked the logs and found an error with one particular file a .jar, excluded that parent folder from Time Machine backup and then it errored out on a different file, /Applications/Calculator.app ?! I am ready to give up on Time Machine and am now running a second bootable clone using CCC to that drive and after 20+ GB copied so far it is still humming along.
So, why would CCC be able to backup to the same drive on the same connections, but Time Machine fails? I guess I could take the MacBook out of the Henge Dock and plug the drive USB cord directly into the MacBook port to try it again, maybe the extension and hubs are degrading the USB signal? If that were the case, why would CCC continue to work fine? OR might this be some strange combination of USB and external display conflict?
2007 black MacBook 2.16 GHz Core2Duo 10.7.5
