Repeatedly corrupt network Time Machine backups

[jamesraward]

I am having a weekly routine of redoing my time machine backup from scratch following my mac telling me that it's corrupted and, although I can back things up from it, I can't continue using it as per this thread:

"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3658856

Is there anything obvious that would help rectify this issue? I've been using time machine happily on my 4TB NAS for the past few years and only now I've upgraded to this MBPr has this happened, I though it might be because I've migrated backup history (lot of good that is now) however starting from scratch still results in the same outcome.

 

[Barney63]

Have you verified that the TM hard drive isn't failing?


Barney

 

[priitv8]

That is one of the reasons, I use only Apple hardware/software as TM backup destination. The drives (except one in the Capsule) are regular external 3.5" USB drives.
Used to happen to me constantly since Lion on AP Extreme 1st and 2nd gen basestations, has not happened (knock on wood!) on Extreme 4th gen nor TimeCapsule or OS X Server. You can count my days from the dates of my posts in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1627019/

 

[whitedragon101]

Have you verified that the TM hard drive isn't failing?


Barney

How would you check that?

 

[S.B.G]

How would you check that?

There are a few ways.

1. If the drive can be connected to a Windows PC, Spinrite can go to work on it and check for and repair or mark bad sectors. (There is a Mac version in development)
   
2. There are various SMART utilities available that can give a high-level status of a drive and let you know if there are any issues.
   
3. Also, if the drive is acting up, getting corrupt files or Time Machine backups, that's a sign of drive failure too.

 

[whitedragon101]

There are a few ways.

1. If the drive can be connected to a Windows PC, Spinrite can go to work on it and check for and repair or mark bad sectors. (There is a Mac version in development)
   
2. There are various SMART utilities available that can give a high-level status of a drive and let you know if there are any issues.
   
3. Also, if the drive is acting up, getting corrupt files or Time Machine backups, that's a sign of drive failure too.

Thanks for that, but I just realised he was talking about a Time Machine not Time Capsule.

Is there any way to check drive health on a time capsule? It seems a bit scary to wait to find out if the drive is dead/dying until you need to do a restore and you just cross your fingers it is still working.

 

[S.B.G]

Thanks for that, but I just realised he was talking about a Time Machine not Time Capsule.

Is there any way to check drive health on a time capsule? It seems a bit scary to wait to find out if the drive is dead/dying until you need to do a restore and you just cross your fingers it is still working.

The only way that I know how is to remove the drive from the Capsule and put it into a normal computer.

 

[whitedragon101]

The only way that I know how is to remove the drive from the Capsule and put it into a normal computer.

Thanks. That is a rather short sighted system for backups.

 

[priitv8]

Thanks. That is a rather short sighted system for backups.

The said message in the first place is a result of failed fsck_hfs system command that is being run before every TM backup.
The easiest way to check would be to follow the tail of log

tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log

then alt-click the TM menu bar icon and select the Verify Backups option.
You will see the verification results in the log.
It's not exactly a low-level HDD test, but as network backups are stored on virtual disk image, low-level errors will crawl into your image.
For network backup to work, the sparsebundle filesystem is paramount.

 

[whitedragon101]

The said message in the first place is a result of failed fsck_hfs system command that is being run before every TM backup.
The easiest way to check would be to follow the tail of log

tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log

then alt-click the TM menu bar icon and select the Verify Backups option.
You will see the verification results in the log.
It's not exactly a low-level HDD test, but as network backups are stored on virtual disk image, low-level errors will crawl into your image.
For network backup to work, the sparsebundle filesystem is paramount.

Thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

I am having a weekly routine of redoing my time machine backup from scratch following my mac telling me that it's corrupted and, although I can back things up from it, I can't continue using it as per this thread:

"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3658856

Is there anything obvious that would help rectify this issue? I've been using time machine happily on my 4TB NAS for the past few years and only now I've upgraded to this MBPr has this happened, I though it might be because I've migrated backup history (lot of good that is now) however starting from scratch still results in the same outcome.

I'm going to guess here that your new Retina has Mavericks on it and that broke Time Machine compatibility with your NAS. When Mavs was first released many of the NAS vendors had to release firmware updates to make the NAS work with Mavs.

What brand/model NAS are you using? Check for a firmware update to make it compatible with Mavericks.