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Time Machine is really buggy

lavrishevo

lavrishevo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 9, 2007
1,864
204
NJ
So anyway brand new iMac and time machine is causing a system wide hang up. The funny thing is that time machine is backing up fine but randomly it is causing Leopard to not allow me to open anything. It is not causing kernel panics but the good old bouncing dock for a few min on end and then nothing. Can't even restart the computer, just sits there and does nothing. Had to hold the power button down for 10 sec or so. I am kind of shocked Leopard is having as much problems as it is. I think Apple needs to get the quality control train back on the tracks.
 
Just got my external drive, and backed up yesterday. No problems. Everything is a little slower when its backing up, but nothing too aggrivating, and its to be expected, being on a 1G G5.
 
I cautiously started using Time Machine today. So far, so good... slowed things down during initial backup, but so what, lol
 
TheNorthWaves said:
I cautiously started using Time Machine today. So far, so good... slowed things down during initial backup, but so what, lol
Click to expand...

I was cautious as well, but i backed up, did a fresh install, and even restored from my time machine back up. Went off without a hitch.
 
I'm glad it is working for you. Could be the combination of an iMac and my external drive. I purchased this computer for my wife and all it really has on it is MS Office, iWork 08, and Parallels running XP pro for a few things she needs for work. I think I am going to turn it on for the backup and then tun it off. Seems to keep things going smoothly until we have another update.
 
webgoat said:
i use fusion myself but haven't set up time machine yet... i've only read in the forums about problems with virtual machines and time machine... check out this link

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/375225/
Click to expand...

I think this answers my question on why time machine was causing leopard to act wacky. This is a pretty big issue is you ask me.

So if you want to exclude something you have to go into options in the time machine system preference then then hit the plus symbol to exclude a folder. For those running Parallels you need to exclude parallels in the applications. folder and the parallels VM folder in your documents folder.

Thanks for the tip.
 
Leopard Beta Tester

Been running leopard for more than a year now, so ive seen time machine grow and have had a good long time to build long series of backups and try different things with it. I have noticed that when time machine is running via USB 2.0 rather than firewire 400 or 800, it is significantly more buggy. check your external drive to see if it will support any form of firewire. Things will be far more stable. Also, make sure to periodically open disk utility and correct your permissions on all drives. If after all of this the drive is still acting funny, you may want to try just erasing the entire external drive back to zeros, reformatting it, and running disk repair, then if all is well, try backing up everything again. If this doesnt fix it, then it may be something to do with your leopard install.

Did you do a upgrade, archive install, or a good clean erase and install?
 
gstilphen said:
Been running leopard for more than a year now, so ive seen time machine grow and have had a good long time to build long series of backups and try different things with it. I have noticed that when time machine is running via USB 2.0 rather than firewire 400 or 800, it is significantly more buggy. check your external drive to see if it will support any form of firewire. Things will be far more stable. Also, make sure to periodically open disk utility and correct your permissions on all drives. If after all of this the drive is still acting funny, you may want to try just erasing the entire external drive back to zeros, reformatting it, and running disk repair, then if all is well, try backing up everything again. If this doesnt fix it, then it may be something to do with your leopard install.

Did you do a upgrade, archive install, or a good clean erase and install?
Click to expand...

The external I purchased for my wife is only usb 2.0. I did the upgrade because my wife had already started to put a bunch of her stuff she needed in the VM and I honestly was a bit lazy to redo everything for her. Leopard has been stable until running T.M. with not one single problem. I really think it might have to do with the VM and T.M. I just excluded Parallels and I am going to see how she acts. If the problem continues I think I will try a fresh install of Leopard.

Let me ask you this though, and I have this same issue on my MBP which right now I can not afford to do a clean install on it. I get a bunch of permissions not repaired after the upgrade both and iMac and MBP. Anything I can do about this? I don't think it causes any issues but it annoys me greatly.
 
best bet is to restart from the leopard install dvd, because it will be given root permissions on the drive unlike the primary admin. just reboot and hold down "c" key. once it boots, choose english, then go to the menus at the top and open disk utility and run repair permissions (rather than just verify permissions) this should correct or allow workarounds for all incorrect permissions. if there are more than a few that come back with "could not repair" or "returned....., expected......" then i'm sorry, a good fresh install is your best bet. honestly though, as time consuming as that can be, its really the best way to approach any OS install.

totally erase the external back to zeros. just open disk utility and click on the drive on the left, then click on the erase tab, then click the options button and choose write drive to zeros. then erase. this should take a good bit of time, probably about 45 min to an hour per 100 gig. once this is done, start going through the drive and saving any documents you want. any software you dont have on cd or dvd, i would copy or copy the installer or .dmg file over to the clean fresh external hard drive. once everything is saved, go ahead and boot from the leopard install dvd and write the internal drive on your MBP or iMac back to zero as well, then do a fresh clean install. now you are free to copy things over to the new clean install and put them where you want. when you are done with that. repair permissions, restart, and erase the external to zeros one more time and set it up as the time machine drive.

I know this is time consuming, but it is the cleanest, most secure way to approach things and rule out the hardware or leopard. if there are still problems, it has to be something you are doing, or something you have saved that is causing problems.
 
I'm in agreement that Time Machine is certainly buggy. I've been running Leopard for about a month(TM from day one) and only yesterday I started getting error messages that my external hard drive(320GB Lacie d2) doesn't have enough disk space. I was under the impression that TM is supposed to delete older backups when it's filled up the hard drive and I've got that selected. Perusing the Apple discussion forums, this doesn't seem to be an isolated problem.
 
gstilphen said:
oh, and check out

http://www.lacie.com/products/clearance/products/?id=10007

or

http://www.newegg.com

both have excellent deals on external harddrives. i particularly love lacie's trible and quad interface drives. i have never once had a lacie drive fail on me, and you just cant beat a good firewire 800 connection.
Click to expand...

I agree, I love my Lacie raid 0 d2, the thing is really fast with the firewire 800 and video editing. Fantastic drive! For my wife though I could not pass up the 320 gig for $60.00
 
Ahhh yes and so far so good with time machine ignoring parallels. I will keep my fingers crossed!
 
USB vs FW

Odd - I have a Drobo, and Time Machine is working fine (only noticed the slow down during initial backup). I had previously used a FW800 drive and had so many problems with it and Leopard & Time Machine I finally switched over to the Drobo. Anybody else having problems with FW800?

Eddie
 
can you schedule backup for time machine?

It seems time machine backups files every hour, but I don't want to do this so often. Can anyone schedule a daily backup? I see no options.
 
Freecity88 said:
It seems time machine backups files every hour, but I don't want to do this so often. Can anyone schedule a daily backup? I see no options.
Click to expand...

Whats wrong with doing it this often? Its only backing up probably a couple MB, maybe a couple hundred, unless you do a lot of video editing, its not gunna be like the first update.
 
actually the ability to edit the time machine intervals is an option apple removed in the retail version. I would imagine that we will eventually get it back when they have finished "tweaking" it. There were a ton of other options at one point in time during the developer beta's, but they were all removed for the final shipping version.

There are a few things apple left out. Like the ability to navigate within stacks. For example if i clicked on my applications stack, then clicked on my utilities folder, it would stay in stacks view and simply redisplay the contents of the utilities folder instead. I am sincerely hoping we get back the rest of the functionality present in the developer beta's.
 
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