Time Machine keeps corrupting

[ourmanontheM62]

A bit stuck on this one. We've two macs, one running 10.10, the other (now) running 10.7. I have backed up for years with no problems to a WD external 500GB USB 2 disk, however this has become full.

I've therefore bought an Akasa USB3 enclose and WD Green 3Gb - when I format this as per Time Machine instructions, it will back up both computers once or twice, then will hang midway through an incremental backup on one of them. I then get an error saying the backup cannot be completed; running Disk Utility gets File System Check Exit Code 8, and a statement that the disk cannot be repaired - as this has happened three or four times, followed by me having to reformat, it's all getting a bit tiresome.

fsck cannot verify the volume completely.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[gnasher729]

Anyone have any suggestions?

Replacing the hard drive.

 

[ourmanontheM62]

Replacing the hard drive.

I was coming to that conclusion - however, one would hope a brand-new HD wouldn't be knackered...

 

[chown33]

I was coming to that conclusion - however, one would hope a brand-new HD wouldn't be knackered...

Sometimes it happens.

Or it could be the cable or the enclosure, rather than the disk drive per se.

Or it could be an intermittent component (cable, enclosure, or HD) that fails during the actual backup. This ends up corrupting the backup, so a subsequent Verify Disk in Disk Utility fails.

Or if there's an external power supply, it could be that.

Or if there isn't an external power supply, it could be the HD is drawing too much power, which causes bad data to be written.

Some of these can be tested by swapping components. Try a different USB cable, try a different disk enclosure, try a different power supply, etc. The options for testing components depends on what you have available for swapping.

 

[ourmanontheM62]

Have just re-formatted again and run another backup, with a different USB cable (as this is the only thing I've got a spare of). First backup fine; ran fsck and the disk was corrupt.

However, I've noticed that the external HD data access light comes on and stays on when I shut down without first ejecting the drive - I'm fairly sure it shouldn't do that (the old WD drive didn't, and when I unmount the disk manually it doesn't either). I wonder if this is the cause of the corruption; any suggestions as to whether it can be fixed?

Still planning to take the disk back on Thu.