Time Capsule Frustration

[brentsg]

I just took delivery of a new 3TB Time Capsule yesterday.

I setup the device, including the disk portion. I'm sharing the drive with device password, which is in keychain.

I setup Time Machine to use the device, and when the first backup begins, everything beachballs and freezes. If I leave the machine, I'll come back to a gray screen with a blinking folder in the center. I've quick-erased the drive a couple times and repeated this behavior.

I thought I'd zero out the drive, but holy cow.. that process takes the router/wireless access point portion of the device offline for 7+ hours. That's a terrible software design.

A couple of notes: I was previously using Time Machine just fine from a different internal drive in my (old) Mac Pro. I can seemingly read and write from/to the Time Capsule drive fine.

Thoughts? Thanks.

 

[Weaselboy]

I can't think of anything you could do incorrectly setting up the Time Capsule that would cause the machine to lock up like that. Are you seeing any other symptoms? It almost sounds more like some sort of issue with the Mac more than the TC.

Try booting to safe mode by holding the shift key when booting then try to backup. Safe mode runs stripped down with no login or startup items, so would eliminate that as the problem.

Any errors when you use Disk Util for a verify disk on the internal disk?

 

[robgendreau]

I agree with weaselboy, maybe it's the Mac. How far does TM get into the backup process before it goes nuts? Prior to writing on the external target it has to do some reading of your boot drive, and it may be barfing on that process.

Try looking at the console logs. And can you back up to anything else?

 

[brentsg]

The Mac goes nuts immediately. Everything works perfectly otherwise, it's a 2010 Mac Pro with Yosemite all updated.

If I setup a different drive and run Time Machine on it, everything's fine. Ugh.. Thanks for the suggestions.

BTW it doesn't seem possible to run Disk Utility on the Time Capsule drive. Even when it's mounted so I can write to it from the Mac, it doesn't appear in Disk Util. There doesn't seem to be any way to troubleshoot the actual drive.

 

[priitv8]

...a gray screen with a blinking folder in the center.

This is a sign of failing HDD (or in some cases incorrectly defined startup disk) in your computer, not a Time Capsule problem.
How to fix Flashing Folder with Question Mark on Mac
http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS1440

 

[brentsg]

This is a sign of failing HDD (or in some cases incorrectly defined startup disk) in your computer, not a Time Capsule problem.
How to fix Flashing Folder with Question Mark on Mac
http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS1440

I would normally agree, but I'm not seeing any signs of that. I'm trying to backup a single Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB SSD via Time Machine. If I do so to any other disk in my box, it works fine. If I do so to the Time Capsule, then I get the blinking folder. I'm wondering if that error can be triggered by issues with the Time Capsule drive.

I can also use CCC to archive the SSD and it's fine. All my internal drives pass every test I toss their way, and none are throwing any errors via SMART or such. Literally, the only issue I'm having is with Time Machine to this specific drive.

Edit: As an update, I've removed, quick-formatted, and re-added the drive to Time Machine probably 4 times. The first few times the result was exactly the same failure, this past time it now seems to be working fine for no apparent reason.

 

[ColdCase]

You using Yositime and there seems to be quite a few Yositime wifi and TC quirks reported. There are several long threads about the forum, more often in the OS or computer sections.

 

[brentsg]

You using Yositime and there seems to be quite a few Yositime wifi and TC quirks reported. There are several long threads about the forum, more often in the OS or computer sections.

Thanks. I'll dig around and look for those.

I've been performing all these via Ethernet so far, directly into the TC. I thought it was finally working but it failed again, though it's no longer going to the blinking folder. Now it's just beachballing and becoming unresponsive. I checked console logs and nothing of note there. I also tried ejecting any disk other than the primary SSD and the TC drive, but same result.

I took the TC offline and I'm well into a TM backup via USB drive.

 

[h9826790]

BTW it doesn't seem possible to run Disk Utility on the Time Capsule drive. Even when it's mounted so I can write to it from the Mac, it doesn't appear in Disk Util. There doesn't seem to be any way to troubleshoot the actual drive.

Thank's strange. I am using the Mac Pro 2009 (Flashed to 5,1) with 10.10.2, no problem with the Time Capsule. And the disk image actually shows up in disk utility when mounted (backing up).

 

[priitv8]

And the disk image actually shows up in disk utility when mounted (backing up).

That's the sparsebundle, aka virtual disk from an image. Not the physical hard drive of Time Capsule.

 

[h9826790]

My understanding is that's a network disk, we can only manage it through Airport Utility. In disk utility, it won't show up network disk, but only the image mounted.

Anyway, for OP, did you try to shut down BOTH your Mac and the TC, unplug the power cable, wait for about 1min, and then start up everything again?

 

[brentsg]

My understanding is that's a network disk, we can only manage it through Airport Utility. In disk utility, it won't show up network disk, but only the image mounted.

Anyway, for OP, did you try to shut down BOTH your Mac and the TC, unplug the power cable, wait for about 1min, and then start up everything again?

I did.. At this point I'm backing up a different Mac to the TC to see how that goes, but that one's not on Yosemite so it's not quite the same. Aside from that, I'll be moving the SSD to a different slot to see if there's some physical issue. Guess I'll keep trying new things like this, possibly even swapping out the SSD, though I'll be surprised if that's a problem.

My last attempt resulted in not being able to wake the display from sleep when it hung. It also spun the Superdrive up to full RPM when it went bonkers. Hopefully I don't have some logic board issue developing.

At this point the thread title should just be Mac frustration.

 

[Cave Man]

Time Capsule or a hard drive connected to an AEBS still sucks. It's a truly awful implementation. You'd think after so many years they'd have it worked out. But they don't.