trouble with Timecapsule & TM

[guido.coza]

Hi i have a 2TB timecapsule
It serves as my router and should be my TM backup volume.
Ontop of this I would like to back-up a external HD i use with my 2012 13" MBA.
As it is i constantly have problems with backups.
even thou I should have dozends of backups on the TC (I got and installed it mid Oct.) there are only 4 backups showing! i do set TM backups manually and do so roughly ones a week!
Also backups with CCC fail to materialize!
Question, Does this sound like a software or a hardware( faulty TC) problem?
What would be the best way to go to back up a external HD on the TC.
is there a wired possibility to backup faster the first time. It takes 8h for 240Gig!!!
P.S. just lost quite a bit of info as one of my exHD packed up!!

 

[DisplacedMic]

Hi i have a 2TB timecapsule
It serves as my router and should be my TM backup volume.
Ontop of this I would like to back-up a external HD i use with my 2012 13" MBA.
As it is i constantly have problems with backups.
even thou I should have dozends of backups on the TC (I got and installed it mid Oct.) there are only 4 backups showing! i do set TM backups manually and do so roughly ones a week!
Also backups with CCC fail to materialize!
Question, Does this sound like a software or a hardware( faulty TC) problem?
What would be the best way to go to back up a external HD on the TC.
is there a wired possibility to backup faster the first time. It takes 8h for 240Gig!!!
P.S. just lost quite a bit of info as one of my exHD packed up!!

i would test this first by allowing TM to run on a normal schedule (hourly).
what exactly do you mean when you say the cloner backups "fail to materialize?"

also if you hold your option button and click on the tm icon you can "verify backups"

don't worry we'll get it working or figure out whats wrong

 

[guido.coza]

i would test this first by allowing TM to run on a normal schedule (hourly).
what exactly do you mean when you say the cloner backups "fail to materialize?"

also if you hold your option button and click on the tm icon you can "verify backups"

don't worry we'll get it working or figure out whats wrong

Hi Displaced (-:
I got the TC as a present in Oct. Obviously I set it up strait away and it worked strait away, that is 14 & 15 Oct.
Since than I randomly, when ever there are some changes on my macair i press backup now and hoped it would do so. I got a bit suspicious when the space on the TC never changed. I opened TM pressed backup now and when the TM icon (Timecapsule) apeared on the screen i opened it and checked the backups folder. There where as said only 5 folder 14-15/10 & 6/11 with one from yesterday (14KB) and latest (inProgress)
I did how ever several times let TM run inbetween, so where are all these updates?
Secondly I tried to back-up a external HD via Carbon copy cloner (CCC) Also here is non of the updates fully on the TC.
I leave the maschine run overnight and have changed the energy setting to never sleep when on mainpower.
As I said I just now lost quite a bit of info as my internal packed up and I did not manually back up that drive yet.
What do I need to do to get TM to back-up my MBA fully and is there any way how I can backup a external HD to TC as soon as it is in range

 

[priitv8]

Check your system.log to see if the backups throw any errors:

sudo grep -i backup /var/log/system.log

PS the network backups do not increase the file size on every run, because they are kept in a disk image (sparsebundle), that is pre-allocated with certain size and will only grow when additional space is needed.
Additionally, the backups are incremental so actual additions to backup files are rather small compared to whole used space on disk.

 

[guido.coza]

Check your system.log to see if the backups throw any errors:

sudo grep -i backup /var/log/system.log

.

Hi priitv
I went into the console but could not find the said log!

I did manage however to backup the external manually HD, took about 36h altogether!!!! GGRRRRR
Is there a app or program that works on Mac and does this with TC automatically.??

 

[DisplacedMic]

Hi Displaced (-:
I got the TC as a present in Oct. Obviously I set it up strait away and it worked strait away, that is 14 & 15 Oct.
Since than I randomly, when ever there are some changes on my macair i press backup now and hoped it would do so. I got a bit suspicious when the space on the TC never changed. I opened TM pressed backup now and when the TM icon (Timecapsule) apeared on the screen i opened it and checked the backups folder. There where as said only 5 folder 14-15/10 & 6/11 with one from yesterday (14KB) and latest (inProgress)
I did how ever several times let TM run inbetween, so where are all these updates?
Secondly I tried to back-up a external HD via Carbon copy cloner (CCC) Also here is non of the updates fully on the TC.
I leave the maschine run overnight and have changed the energy setting to never sleep when on mainpower.
As I said I just now lost quite a bit of info as my internal packed up and I did not manually back up that drive yet.
What do I need to do to get TM to back-up my MBA fully and is there any way how I can backup a external HD to TC as soon as it is in range

i'm having a hard time understanding what you are trying to say here. the first time you run time machine it will take forever...i suppose it could take as long as 36 hours depending your connection. If possible it might not be a terrible idea to let that first one run over a wired connection although that is not absolutely essential.

time machine should run on its own. unless you have fiddled with the command line options, which i doubt you have, time machine should do incremental backups every hour. if your computer isn't in range or isn't on then it will just back up the next time it can. it should run in the background and after that first backup or barring large changes you might not notice a tremendous amount of change in the storage on your time capsule.

if you click on the time machine icon in the top right of your computer you should see when it backed up last. what does it say?

For example mine says:

Latest time capsule backup:
Today 7:41am

if you click on "open time machine preferences" it will give you more info re space, when it last backed up and what the general settings are.

let us know if there is anything strange you see in there.

as for backing up an external harddrive, make sure they aren't excluded in the backup settings i mentioned above.

 

[Brian33]

A few points which may help:

1.) I believe that by default when you attach an external drive the first time the drive is put into the TM exclusion list, meaning it won't be backed up. To change this, go to System Prefs-->Time Machine-->Options... If your external is listed, there, select it and hit the "-" to delete it from the exclusion list.

2.) You can use Finder to see what backups are on your Time Capsule. Open Finder, under Shared select your Time Capsule (you may have to change Finder preferences to make sure the TC shows up there). After Finder connects to TC, you should see your TC internal disk name in the window -- double click it. Then you should see a ".sparsebundle" file (a kind of disk image), so double-click it to mount it.

Find and open the disk image that was mounted (mine is called "Time Machine Backups") either on your desktop (if your prefs are set that way) or in Finder sidebar. Now you can open Backups.backupdb and YourMachineName folders to see dated folders of every backup.

Within each dated folder, you should see a folder for your internal drive name, and a folder for the external drive (if backed up by TM). (Response time will be slow -- be a little patient.)

3) Time Machine is probably putting some useful error messages into the system log. I use Console.app (in Applications-->Utilities) to review them. Use View-->Show Log List if you need to, then select "All Messages" under the System Log Queries. You can filter the messages to show only TM messages by entering "backupd" (no quotes) in the filter box in the top right corner.

Now you can kind of follow along the last backup to see how it progressed (or not).

Hope this helps.

 

[guido.coza]

A few points which may help:

Find and open the disk image that was mounted (mine is called "Time Machine Backups") either on your desktop (if your prefs are set that way) or in Finder sidebar. Now you can open Backups.backupdb and YourMachineName folders to see dated folders of every backup.

Within each dated folder, you should see a folder for your internal drive name, and a folder for the external drive (if backed up by TM). (Response time will be slow -- be a little patient.)

3) Time Machine is probably putting some useful error messages into the system log. I use Console.app (in Applications-->Utilities) to review them. Use View-->Show Log List if you need to, then select "All Messages" under the System Log Queries. You can filter the messages to show only TM messages by entering "backupd" (no quotes) in the filter box in the top right corner
Hope this helps.

Hi Brian and all the others, thanks a mill for all your help.

I think what happens is that TC got out of reach when I get into the bedroom (less than 7m as a Fly flies) I would not have thought that the reach is that short!!!! )-:
Now that I left the laptop next to the TC it worked. I got a TM backup and I could get CCC to complete one external HD backup even that it took 38+h though.
The rest i figured and hope to clean up all the fragments.
Txs again
Guy