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

Time Machine, How to check if data on external drive is free of any failures

M

Mac2013orlater

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 2, 2014
98
2
Time Machine, How to check if data on external drive is free of any failures
Time Machine along with external drive is in use.
How to check if all data collected by TM on that drive is free of any errors
(i.e. file system errors, bad sectors, others)?
 
There are a couple things you can check, but the ultimate test is to try and restore a couple folders to another location just to make sure everything is there.

But as a check you can:

1. Open Console app and type "backup" in the filter bar at the top then scroll through the logs for the last few Time Machine (TM) backups. If TM is hanging on a file or folder it will be listed in that log as an error.

2. Use Disk Utility to do a verify disk on the external TM disk.

3. Option click the TM menu icon and select "verify backups".
 
To add to what Weasleboy said, #2 is if the external drive is wired to your computer, #3 is only for wireless connections. (it'll be greyed out for wired)
 
Actually, it is TM on a NAS. Pardon for not been accurate enough till now.
So the console seems to be the only option.
 
Weaselboy said:
3. Option click the TM menu icon and select "verify backups".
Click to expand...
Weaselboy said:
Actually... verify backups is there on a wired connection. I just checked and it is there on my system connected via ethernet.
Click to expand...

If you mean the menu as on attached screen shot, there is unfortunately no
such option as for Mavericks 10.9.3
 

Attachments

  • Untitled--.jpg
    Untitled--.jpg
    21.7 KB · Views: 119
Weaselboy said:
Actually... verify backups is there on a wired connection. I just checked and it is there on my system connected via ethernet.
Click to expand...

I guess network connections have 'em. USB does not.

Mac2013orlater said:
If you mean the menu as on attached screen shot, there is unfortunately no
such option as for Mavericks 10.9.3
Click to expand...

You have to hold the option key, then click on the TM menu icon.
 
satcomer said:
If the the NAS has a Time Machine Server sent that up in the NAS. If the NAS doesn't have a Time Machine Server the follow the blog site Configuring OS X Mountain Lion Time Machine to Work With CIFS (SMB) Share (Don't worry it still works in 10.9.x).
Click to expand...

OP >> Just my opinion, but I would not trust my backups to the unsupported solution linked above. It may work for now, but often results in corrupted backups. Time Machine is designed to work with the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), and using it with CIFS/SMB will not be reliable. Here is the Apple support page on the topic. Here is a long and boring technical explanation of why AFP is required.
 
Weaselboy said:
OP >> Just my opinion, but I would not trust my backups to the unsupported solution linked above. It may work for now, but often results in corrupted backups. Time Machine is designed to work with the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), and using it with CIFS/SMB will not be reliable. Here is the Apple support page on the topic. Here is a long and boring technical explanation of why AFP is required.
Click to expand...

Solutions offered by Apple do not meet our requirements.
Therefore the TM on NAS by 3rd party in our case.
The NAS supports and has enabled the AFP, thus I guess the TM runs over AFP.
 
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