Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Happy/unhappy users of Time Machine please post

Time Machine: Working well, or not so swell?

  • Working appropriately

    Votes: 54 75.0%

  • Minor problems, can be/have been solved

    Votes: 11 15.3%

  • Major problems, affect the usage of it

    Votes: 9 12.5%
  • Total voters
    72
T

TheNorthWaves

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I was wondering what problems there currently are with Time Machine. Whether you have had problems or not, please take a moment to post your basic impressions of Time Machine and list your hardware/software/hdd. (That means those of you who happily use Time Machine, please chime in as well!) Perhaps we can begin to notice some patterns among problematic systems.
 
I guess it seems to work and works without me noticing it. I have only recovered 1 file and that was to make sure it was working.

I am quite upset that not only is there no air disk support, but no support for NAS at all. This really limits what I can do with Time Machine. I hope in a future version Apple will add this. I mean from what I hear it was in the betas.
 
I have mine running with a ReadyNAS NV+ for the last Month.

It was a bit of a challenge to get it all set up, but it works great. Only real issue left is that I have to "Browse other Time Machine Disks" when I want to go back in time.

I've restored a few different files from various points in time just to see the thing work. Its a little slow over wireless, but it does work.

They really need to work on a few features, mainly NAS / Airdisk support and the ability to move the TM libraries around, without having to name everything the same as the initial partition you created.
 
Time machine does not back up automatically anymore, despite having switched it on. On the times it says it will backup it doesn't; it only changes the time of the next planned backup to one hour later. Manual backups do work however
 
Intel iMac and Buffalo Networks Linkstation

Cannot get Time Machine to work with posted work-arounds. Basically anytime the system goes to sleep or to screen saver it hoses the TM backup as well as the server connection to the Linkstation.

I would love to see Apple add support for NAS's as well as more control over scheduling.
 
Well since I cant use Time Machine, as I have a NAS drive and I am on a macbook. I cant say I am a user, therefor cannot vote!
 
For me, TM has been running fine with the exception of hogging resources when it's backing up. Not a big deal unless you are rendering video and TM kicks in and steals 60% of the CPU. What I wanted was more control over how and when it does backups. I think hourly is over-kill and wanted to set it up to create a new backup every 12 hours instead. I managed to do that with a script, automator and iCal. Now I'm happy.
 
works great on my iMac c2d with a USB drive. Yet to set it up with my MacBook, but both systems have leopard so I should be able to do a network backup on a new iMac partition.
 
THX1139 said:
For me, TM has been running fine with the exception of hogging resources when it's backing up. Not a big deal unless you are rendering video and TM kicks in and steals 60% of the CPU. What I wanted was more control over how and when it does backups. I think hourly is over-kill and wanted to set it up to create a new backup every 12 hours instead. I managed to do that with a script, automator and iCal. Now I'm happy.
Click to expand...
what are ur mac's specs?
 
FBDiver said:
Intel iMac and Buffalo Networks Linkstation

Cannot get Time Machine to work with posted work-arounds. Basically anytime the system goes to sleep or to screen saver it hoses the TM backup as well as the server connection to the Linkstation.

I would love to see Apple add support for NAS's as well as more control over scheduling.
Click to expand...

I haven't had those issues with mine. I did turn off sleep when I did the initial backup (took 3 days over wireless G), but I turned it back on and I haven't had an issue.

I didn't care for the scheduling either, but it hasn't affected me. Then again, its my home computer. I guess it would suck if it kept kicking in while I was working.

As far as space, doesn't it roll up the hourly changes into daily / weekly then monthly changes?
 
It took me a half dozen tries to get the initial backup done. It would constantly stall out.

Now it works well most of the time. Some backups still seem to totally stall out and the computer stops backing up for a few hours, but for the most part it's a nice system that you don't have to worry about.
 
Except for one minor problem on my iMac G5 that caused Time Machine not to back anything up at first, it works perfectly. It even saved my data when I had to reinstall/reformat due to a Boot Camp partitioning issue.😀
 
mike12806 said:
what are ur mac's specs?
Click to expand...

MacPro 2.66 with X1900 and 6GB Ram. Strange that TM would slow that machine down! But in fairness, it's only when it has to backup a lot of data. If I didn't get much work done, the backup takes less time and isn't as noticeable.
 
THX1139 said:
MacPro 2.66 with X1900 and 6GB Ram. Strange that TM would slow that machine down! But in fairness, it's only when it has to backup a lot of data. If I didn't get much work done, the backup takes less time and isn't as noticeable.
Click to expand...

Are you using a USB or FireWire drive? I have two USB hds, a scanner/printer, eyetv hybrid, and my iPhone connected via USB, and I think this slows my backups considerably sometime.
 
time machine and buffalo linkstation - any ideas

can't get linkstation to work with time machine - leopard. Any suggestions as to how to get around this?
 
TM with another mac running leopard?

I have an MBP and recently got a mini to hook up to my HDTV. I figured I could avoid getting a Time Capsule as TM can backup to usb hdds connected to the mini. However this does not seem to work for me. The hourly backups just don't happen. I'm not sure if this is a problem that started after 10.5.2 or if it was there before as I started to try this only after 10.5.2 came out.

However, if i manually kick TM to start backing up, it does so fine. The problem seems to be that after a TM backup, TM unmounts the drive and closes the connection. So the next time it has to do a backup, when TM checks it can't find the drive connected as it has been unmounted. And so refuses to backup. Even when doing a manual backup, I have to first make sure that through finder, I go andmount the HDD using file sharing and only then will TM see the drive and backup to it?

Has anyone else noticed this? Am I doing something wrong?

Previously I had TM backing up to my Maxtor NAS. This was working perfectly until the disk filled up and TM recursively deleted all my backups. TM can't adjust the size of the sparse bundle file even after deleting a backup. So if the disk fills up, TM goes crazy and deletes all my backups.. Is there a workaround to this that anyone know of?
 
SOOOOO slow - it was taking up to two days to do the 1st back-up to my USB2 drive, so I bought a FW800 drive - not much better.

And I did a full OS re-install and used Time Machine to get the info back on - half of it wasn't there (emails and iCal events to name but two). Thankfully I did a manual back-up too.

Now, I don't use TM.
 
Works fine - "looks" bad.

For some reason in both 10.5.1. & 10.5.2 (using Combo Updater) on my new Mac Pro (early 2008) TM is just missing the colored Vortex background image and animation? I just get a blank white background behind the windows going back in time. TM works fine in my machine - just "looks" blah.

AppleCare had no answers as to why or how to fix it after an hour mostly on hold?
 
Time Machine errors

The damn thing hasn't backed up successfully ONCE.

I'm NOT impressed... especially since this is supposedly one of the "great features" of Leopard.

😡
 
It seems to work ok for me.. then again, I've never tried to restore anything. At any rate, it doesn't bog my system down when it's doing it's thing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back