One of two external drives never does incremental after unplugging

I've been fighting this for weeks and I am totally buffaloed.
I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 running Small Business Server 2008. I've been using Windows Server Backup with BackupAssist as a "front-end" for years. I have two nominally identical eSATA external enclosures, each with a Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 4 TB
disk. I don't recall how long I've had these but it's been a while. I swap them out pretty much every day, and back up to the attached disk every day of the week.
A few weeks ago I added another 500GB to my PERC-6 RAID-5 array. At the same time I changed my backup strategy. I had the two external disks formatted with two partitions, one for the image backup and one for data from other servers. I decided to have only
one partition and only do image backups but put the backups from the other servers into a folder on the main server so they wind up in the image.
Ever since then, if I unplug one of the disks (call it disk A) and plug in the other disk (call it disk B) and let the scheduled backup run, and then remove disk B, plug in disk A, and let the scheduled backup run, disk A winds up with only the most recent
backup on it. Disk B, OTOH, accumulates backups as expected and as before the switch. And disk A accumulates multiple backups as long as it remains plugged in (e.g. over the weekend).
Both disks reports SMART data in the green. An intensive multi-day surface check with Victoria doesn't show an bad or even problematic sectors. I've reformatted many times, and deleted and re-created the partition a couple of times.
BackupAssist tech support can't figure out what's happening. I've tried to test with using WSB directly but I haven't come up with any useful results becasue I don't really understand how to set up a rotating-media backup in WSB. I've done various checks and
repairs with wbadmin without any joy. It seems pretty unlikely that the problem is in BackupAssist becasue all it does is write a script then call WSB to execute it, and the script doesn't vary.
Help??

Hi,
There are several reasons which may cause the backup to be full instead of incremental, such as source volume snapshot is deleted, from which the last backup was taken.
For more detailed information, please refer to the thread below:
control incremental vs full backup on W2k8 R2
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/7820edc7-18ef-4f6e-bb50-f87f4a728597/control-incremental-vs-full-backup-on-w2k8-r2?forum=windowsbackup
There is a similar thread, please go through it to help troubleshoot this issue:
Understanding Windows Small Business Server 2008 Backup - Full and Incremental with 2 Backup Destinations
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/bdb3c5ae-81dc-4f54-a39e-4b888ee52476/understanding-windows-small-business-server-2008-backup-full-and-incremental-with-2-backup
Regards,
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Similar Messages

How to mount one of two external drives on startup without login

I have a Mac Mini that runs as a server on my network. It has two external USB drives attached: one contains documents, and the other is a TimeMachine backup of the server. Neither disk mounts on a machine on the network until a user interactively logs in, but I would like one of them to be mounted at startup of a MacBook Pro on the network running OS X Mavericks 10.9.3.
The following script was suggested at <https://discussions.apple.com/message/5770284#5770284> in response to a desire to mount all external FireWire drives running under OS X 10.5 Leopard:
You can do this with the following command (note: it will ask for your admin password):
sudo cat >/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plist <<"EOF"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin</key><true/>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF
I have two questions about this command:
1. Is it valid for OS X Mavericks 10.9.3?
2. Can it be modified to mount only one of the external disks attached to the server (the one containing documents)?
Thanks in advance for your kind assistance with these questions.
Best wishes,
Stuart
Stuart A. Forsyth
<Email Edited by Host>

I can now confirm this file
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plist
does automatically get created on Mavericks Servers but not on non-Server Mavericks machines. It is possible to create it on non-Server Mavericks machines and reports are this works as expected.
Obviously the fact it is created automatically by Server.app on Mavericks servers means Mavericks still supports this.
Rather than hand-editing the file as per the original tip the following will achieve the same goal but will result in a binary format plist file which is what Server.app would create.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true

One person, one iPhone, one laptop. Two homes in two states, two external drives, two identical copies of my music library. Many headaches.

I feel like this question is asked endlessly on these boards, but somehow I still can't find a relevant answer... So, apologies for rehashing a variant of the same question!
I have one (ancient) MacBook Pro, and one (ancient) iPhone. I carry both back and forth between two states: the state where I work and the state where I live the rest of the time. My ancient MBP and my ancient iPhone are too small to carry my whole music collection (which is quite large—larger than a new phone or laptop would reasonably support, anyway). My mobile apps and my podcasts live on my laptop, but my music library lives on an external drive. I have two external drives now, one in each state where I live/work. I also have a copy of everything on my desktop machine at work, but I've given up long ago trying to sync to multiple computers. I'll settle for now for syncing to one computer (my MBP), which sometimes is connected to one copy of my library, and sometimes is connected to another copy of my library.
I know that I can make multiple iTunes libraries, with duplicate copies of my podcast subscriptions, my apps, and my playlists and music, and keep switching which one my phone is set to sync to (wiping it each time, and possibly losing some settings in the process?) But that's a pain in the neck. Plus, it's hard to keep my podcasts active in both libraries, because iTunes podcast subscriptions are like frail little tamagotchi critters that need constant love, nurturing, and encouragement, or else they wither and die.
Is there any way to have a single library, with my apps and podcasts on the laptop, which just happens to make use of the "local" copies of my music on whichever external drive happens to be attached?
Or do I need the google cloud + android if I want to unify my listening and syncing life?
Thanks!

Hi,
There are several reasons which may cause the backup to be full instead of incremental, such as source volume snapshot is deleted, from which the last backup was taken.
For more detailed information, please refer to the thread below:
control incremental vs full backup on W2k8 R2
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/7820edc7-18ef-4f6e-bb50-f87f4a728597/control-incremental-vs-full-backup-on-w2k8-r2?forum=windowsbackup
There is a similar thread, please go through it to help troubleshoot this issue:
Understanding Windows Small Business Server 2008 Backup - Full and Incremental with 2 Backup Destinations
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/bdb3c5ae-81dc-4f54-a39e-4b888ee52476/understanding-windows-small-business-server-2008-backup-full-and-incremental-with-2-backup
Regards,
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Daisy chain two external drives via Firewire, then connect one via USB to the TC?

Hi,
I have two external drives that have both Firewire and USB ports. My 1st generation 500 gb Time Capsule (maybe all of them?) only has USB ports so up til now, I have connected one or the other drive via USB. (I've tried to connect both to a powered USB hub but one drive has problems showing up. At this point I only use the one drive that shows up and connect it directly with no hub to the Time Capsue.)
My question is: Can I daisy chain the two drives via Firewire and then connect one of them (probably the one that has no problems connecting with USB) to the Time Capsule via USB?
Second, somewhat-related problem...
I don't know why one drive isn't connecting very well when directly connected to the Time Capsule. Both are Fantom drives. One is a 1TB, the one that has prblems connecting is a 250GB. I've tried connecting directly or through a powered hub. The 1B has no problems, the 250 gb won't show up most of the time and disconnects itself fairly quickly if it does connect. I've switched cables; that hasn't helped. The 1TB stays connected most of the time but sometimes it disconnects too. I suspect the Time Capsule just isn't able to deal with external drives so I don't puch it. It would be nice to be able to have both drives accessable through the TC though.
Thanks for any help.
Cheers,
John

Doing some experimentation, connecting the drives directly to the MBP:
- Neither of the two drives Firewire daisy-chained and going through the powered USB hub connected to the MBP mount. I was using old aliases on desktop.*They don't show up on network otherwise. (Each drive self-mounts with both Firewire and USB direct connections.)
*Even after making new aliases, neither drive will mount using their new aliases when directly connected (not through hub) with USB or Firewire (and Thunderbolt adapter.) That's weird.
- Both the 240 gb and the 1TB drives going through powered hub connected to MBP mount by themselves.
- Two drives daisy-chained via Firewire and one drive connected to the MBP via Firewire (and Thunderbolt adapter) self-mount. No surprise there but that doesn't help me as I want to have the drives further away from the MBP and connected to the Time Capsule, which doesn't have a Firewire port anyway...
- All of the USB and the Firewire cables work as does the Thunderbolt adapter. I tested them.
I wonder.... I have a Firewire to what appears to be an Ethernet connector. I wonder if that would be any good. I'm afraid to try it though...

Backing up to two external drives at same time

I have two external drives, one for Time Machine and one using SuperDuper, both using USB. Can both be running at the same time or should one be disconnected before running a backup on the other? Thanks

Both can be used at the same time.
If the backups run at the same time, both will be trying to use USB at the same time, so both will be slowed down.
Unless TM is doing a large backup, though, the impact should not be great.
And it's best to leave them connected at all times, rather than connect and disconnect (unless you're taking one off-site).

Using smart previews on iMac to control two sets of identical original files on two external drives --- render previews setting when using smart previews

I’m just getting started with Lightroom and if someone can help me I’ll be very appreciative.
I’m using an iMac with a 1TB drive and two external 2.5 TB drives for backup. My active files are on all three drives and I’m running out of room on the iMac drive.
With the smart previews capability of Lightroom 5, I’m hoping to remove all the active files from the iMac drive. I hope to import existing images into the LR catalog from two identical drives with identical folders and have both sets of images reflect the changes I make using smart previews on my iMac.
I just created two identical test folders of junk images on the external drives and was following a beginners tutorial on importing. However, I see nothing about using smart previews on my iMac that, when connected, will update more than one external drive at the same time.
I’m also wondering if, when using smart previews, it matters how I set the render previews during the import process.
Many thanks for any help,
Karl Hentz

I don't see any way to use smart previews to update both external drives at the same time. The smart previews are linked to a specific set of images. But it seems to me that if both drives are in fact identical, once the catalog is updated when one of those drives is connected those changes should also apply to the files on the other drive. It's actually the catalog that gets updated, not the images. Smart previews and regular import previews are completely unrelated. How you have your import previews configured will have no effect on your smart previews.
Incidentally, in order for my suggestion to work it would be necessary to only have one of those external drives connected. And when the other EHD is connected it would have to have the same drive letter or name. In other words it would have to appear to the iMac that it is precisely the same drive.

Is it possible to set up a backup between two external drives

Is it possible to set up a backup between two external drives?
i use time machine to back up my imac onto an external 2T.
i also have two external 3T drives. i am looking for redundancy of data, tried software RAID and it failed. i also see some limitations with RAID that a backup would avoid.
thanks for sharing your expertise.
be well,
tony

so thanks to all of you, particularly rkaufmann87 i have decided to stop the plan of setting up a software RAID set. instead i have downloaded ccc and am in the process of setting up the secone 3t external drive as a clone. i will use time machine to back up the internal hard drive only and if possible see if i can clone that as well onto one of the 3t's.
this gives me the peace of mind i sounght and avoids the problem of total corruption that exists with the raid solution i was exploring.
thank you all for making this an enjoyable and informative experience. what a powerful community.
be well
tony

System recognizes external drive but does not eject disk

I connected external DVD drive to imac and clicked on 'Eject Remote Disk' from File. Nothing happened.
System recognizes external drive but does not eject disk. What should I do next?
<Re-Titled By Host>

Run this command this in the Terminal app:
drutil eject -drive external

Time Machine backup on external drive no longer working after upgrade to Yosemite

Can anyone explain why, after upgrade to Yosemite, Time Machine is no loger working? Backup on external drive stops few seconds after it has started. What can I do?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Try running a DVD Lens Cleaner disc through it, a little bit of dust or dirt is all it takes to throw them out and it might just be co-incidental with the upgrade.

Is Time Machine the best way to backup two external drives?

I only have the most basic understanding of Time Machine. I hook up an external drive to my MacBook Pro, click "backup now" on Time Machine, wait a while, and forget about it because I've never had to use it to retrieve a file - thank heaven.
Now I also have two external 2TB portable drives that are close to full and which need to be backed up. I just bought a 4TB drive that I haven't taken out of the box yet. Is it a simple matter to create two Time Machine files on the 4TB drive ... one for each of the 2TB drives?
And is Time Machine the best way to do this? Or is there some other system that makes more sense for backing up on this scale and with two drives?
-JOHN

No Time Machine is not the only way.
You can use one of the drive cloning softeare programs to clone your internal drive to an external or you can use OS X Disk Utility to do basically the same thing, IE Clone/Copy your internal drive to an external.
But in your case it look as if the upgrading of the iPhoto database has wiped out alll your images. What you are actually asking about is "Can you now get back those photos without first doing any backup of any type".
And the answer to that is No you can not.

Backing up to two external drives simultaneously?

I have an external 2TB drive that I use with my MacBook Pro.
Costco right now has 3TB Seagate drives for $99 and I plan to buy two ... one as my main external drive and another as a mirror backup.
I want to transfer the contents of the old 2TB drive to both 3TB drives at the same time, mainly because of the amount of time it takes to transfer that much data and to save those extra hours of running time on the old 2TB drive if it has to be done twice.
Can this be done? I've never copied files to more than one backup drive at a time and I don't find anything about it on google. No idea what steps I would need to take to copy contents of one drive to two other drives at the same time.

Well you got this problem.
All hard drives come from the factory with a certain number of bad sectors on the drive.
There is a automatic mapping off process in place to catch failing sectors, but it doesn't work on completely failed sectors with your data on it, thus people tend to lose files, especially if they are large.
Sometimes those lost files are system or preference files, which we use do to spend a lot of time assisting people here to solve them.
Now the odds of you having more bad sectors increases with larger drives, but there is a method to catch most of them before you lay your precious data on them and using it as guinea pig.
Then there is a question of what file format to use on the external drive, because if you don't plan ahead your copying all the data off, then formatting, then copying all the data back onto the drive.
There is a cross platform format called exFAT that works fine with Windows, Linux and Mac's that all can read and write, also use larger than 4GB sized files.
Most drives come formatted FAT32, which has a 4GB file size limit.
However, Mac's don't format the exFAT format so Windows can use it correctly, however Windows will format exFAT correctly and Mac's can use it no problem. Why is this? I don't know.
Anyway this is what I propose you do since you abhor the lenghtly copying.
1: Select each drive in Disk Utility and click Erase > Security Option > Zero All Data (or move the slider one spot to the right and click Erase.) This is going to take a long time to finish because it's going to write Zeros to the entire drive, then read it back for verification. Do not use 3x-7x as it will take days to finish. If the drive fails the Zero, it's likely bad and needs replacement. Better found out now than later with your precious data on it.
2: So once the Disk Utility > Zero (format irrelevant) is completed on both drives, take each to the oldest Windows version your going to use, XP is the big problem. If it doesn't have exFAT installed, there is a free install just search Microsofts site for it.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19364
Right click and format exFAT on Windows on each drive, it will apply the proper Partition Table for each depending, XP uses a MBR and Vista, Win7/8 and OS X use GUID.
Again, do NOT format exFAT on a Mac if your ever going to use it with a PC as it can't read it.
If your NEVER going to use the drives with a Windows machine, then when your Zeroing in Disk Uitlity, choose GUID and OS X Extended Journaled as the format.
3: Once the two drives are formatted, your good to go copying files.
Writes are usually slightly slower than reads, unless your drive your reading from is slow or suffers from bad secor issues.
So if you copy from one drive to two, there might be some slight performance gain, but it's only the small difference between read and writes speeds of the parent and child drives. On a large copy if might trim off some minutes, but no way can it copy two drives in the time it takes to do one.
You likely heard of "Mirrored RAID" or RAID 1, this is a more pernament solution for servers mostly that DOES write to two drives exactly at the same time. However the drives in a RAID setup are paired up and it's difficult to unpair them once the RAID is setup and use them like normal file drives like you intend to do.
I always intended to write a User Tip how to resolve this unpairing RAID issue, but rarely does anyone use RAID on Mac's anymore.
So your best solution is to set a lot of time aside and let the machine do the work (non-RAID) when your not using it.
Having the max amount of RAM in the machine will assist greatly.

One of My External Drive Icons is invisible how do I get it back

Hi.
I have a couple of External (USB and Firewire) drives. Recently my Firewire drive (a WD My Book Studio 1Tb Drive) disappeared from the desktop and finder.
If I look in Disk Utility it is there and I can reveal it or open it from Disk Utility and all the files etc are there and are fine.
I have run a disk repair on the drive and also a permissions repair on the main Mac drive. Any all seems OK.
It does not seem to be locked or anything and as far as I can tell is is working just fine except that because it is invisible in Finder and Desktop it is also invisible to the file open in applications.
I have also tried disconnecting all other hardware except the keyboard and mouse and starting the iMac and then reconnecting the drive to teh firewire port but it simply does not want to appear.
MY OSX is fully patched and totally up-to-date as far as I can tell.
NB I am a relative newbie to the MAC world (and have no Linux/Unix) experience so please make any instructions or advice clear and simple.
Oh and while I write this I am copying everything of the drive to one of my other USB drives (Oh so slow) but at least I will have a backup and I guess I could repartition etc the Firewire drive.
Hmm - just had a thought - one thing I didn't try was connecting the drive via USB as that would also be a check on drive health.. Will do that once all the data is copies off..
Very frustrating. I need to get this icon/drive visible again..
Please help..
Steve

Hi..
After following the above terminal command instructions (and finishing a copy of the critical data just in case). The device never reapeared bit as I was doing a copy of critical data I didn't wanna reboot just in case.
before rebooting and while the copy was occurring I reset the missing drive as my Time Machine Backup Drive (which it was a few months back) - yep time machine could see it. When I did the drive magically reappeared on my Desktop.
It didn't however reappear in Finder.
I then shut down the iMAC and all devices (which I had also been doing earlier to see if it would come back) and low and behold the device is now showing back in my Finder and on the Desktop.
I have rebooted a couple of times and it is still there so looks like the issue is resolved.
Not sure if it was the commands I typed in at terminal or the Time Machine reset but all is OK.
Not sure if Time Machine has screwed around with the setting or had cleaned up a setting or whether the command line instruction worked. But either way I am happy and so far all is looking great..
BTW I have reset my Time Machine back to the other external drive (which is what bought it for) and rebooted and the missing one is still there so that is a relief.
Thanks for the advice...
S.

Work Flow + Two External Drives + Aperture -vs- iView MediaPro

Greetings!
Hoped for end result: 30 GB of photos available at home and office. Freed up hard drive space on MacBook Pro. An organized system for locating photos.
I am seeking to break my old photo workflow paradigm.
Recently, I have moved 30 GB of images from iPhoto to an external drive (actually to two different external drives). I do not plan to use iPhoto in the future (only minimal use). Insights on the following would be appreciated:
(1) I have two - FreeAgent Pro - hard drives - 750 GB. One at home and the other in my office. The data on both drives (i.e. 30 GB of image) is identical. A GENEROUS amount of space is still available on these external drives. Just completed this process / setting up both identical drives last night ... identical images at the office and home.
(2) My hoped for outcome is to be able to access my photos at work / home and have some program (Aperture -vs- iView MediaPro) to manage the work flow. Thus, keeping my MacBook Pro hard drive freed up.
(3) The majority of Apple Discussion users seem dedicated to using Aperture. What do you see as the benefits of Aperture -vs- iView MediaPro? Yes, I know the latter in now owned my MS.
(4) Still not totally sure, the best way, to workflow my photos with with the dual external drives and Aperture. Your guidance, please.
(5) Here is a possible scenario (example):
STEP ONE - (at home) download a new batch of photos (Olympus E-1, high res jpeg's, no raw) onto my macBook Pro (MBP) into folder "A".
STEP TWO - process (ingest) ... move the new photos into Aperture.
STEP THREE - load them into my home external drive.
STEP FOUR - The next time I am in the office load the original jpegs (folder "A") onto my office external drive.
STEP FIVE - Delete the originals photos from folder "A", keeping my MBP hard drive space freed up.
STEP SIX - unsure ... somehow connect the new photos on the office external drive with Aperture (or iView MediaPro).
Where have I missed the boat?! Scrambled things up?! Does this make sense?
For what I am seeking to accomplish, will iView MediaPro accomplish what Aperture could perform?
Kind regards,
Bill Siegrist
[email protected]

Bill-
If all you are doing is managing 30 GB of pre-existing JPEGs in 2007 iVMP is probably superior. However I would venture a guess that you also intend to capture new images with your DSLR. For that you very much want Aperture. And IMO moving to 2008 and beyond Aperture's potential far exceeds iVMP's.
And you did note that iVMP is now owned by MS; not good.
Solving an entire workflow is not something easily done in a few forum paragraphs. I strongly recommend that every DSLR photog with adequate computer hardware first spend $33 and work through the tutorial CD Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 1.5 (Apple Pro Training) by Orlando Luna and Ben Long (Paperback - Oct 18, 2006).
Have the CD and a MacIntel with 2 GB or preferably more of RAM prior to ordering the Aperture trial so you don't waste time of the 30 day trial. Note that the value is in the tutorial, not in using the book as a manual. Due to the limited hard drive capacity, anyone with a laptop should focus on developing a "Reference Masters" workflow.
You say JPEGs, no RAW. I would in the strongest possible terms recommend that you consider switching to a RAW workflow. In addition to allowing extraordinary post process editing, RAW image files contain much more image data. I believe that your DSLR will capture up to a dozen RAW pix before the buffer fills. Shooting JPEGs is a serious under utilization of a capable DSLR.
-Allen Wicks

Problems with two external drives

I apologise for posting this again but this question was posted on the day the support site was being worked on, so just in case it was missed by most I am posting it again. I have since heard of at least 3 people who have problems when using more than one external drive.
I have 2 external drives, a Lacie 300gig, and a Western Digital (in a Smart-drive case) 500gig.
Both are partitioned, one volume for Time Machine, one volume for a bootable clone (done with Super Duper), the other 2 for various stuff.
Both drives have extra firewire ports. Whenever I link them together via one or the others firewire ports, I have all sorts of problems, ie. moving data, TM prepares for long periods and will cause the machine not to shutdown or restart, system freeze, Imac sometimes won't start up properly with both connected (blue screen) ect.
When either drive is plugged directly into the Imac by itself everything is fine.
I would like both drives always connected.
Should I use a Firewire hub instead of the HD ports?
Am I doing something wrong?
I have replaced leads and run disk utility on both disks, both appear fine.

The Lacie drive has two extra firewire ports(I have tried both ports), the WD drive has a pass through port. I have tried reversing the drives with the same result.
Sorry but I don't understand what you mean by full size drives? And how do I configure one or both to be the master?

Time Machine stopped working after using two external drives

I'm using a MacPro OS x 10.5.8. I started using Time Machine in April 2011 to back up my files to a 2TB Lacie external drive connected via firewire. Everything has been working fine until recently. A friend needed some files transfered from Seagate 1TB to another external drive. I bought a Lacie 1TB USB 3 drive and connected it to my Mac to make the file transfer. After doing this I noticed that the generic drive icon for my 2TB Lacie backup drive had disappeared. I could see the generic icon for the new 1TB Lacie drive. Then I noticed a Lacie icon on my desktop. I clicked on it and found it was my 2TB backup drive.
I decided to check Time Machine to see if it was still working properly. When I tried to restore to a previous time, the restore button stayed grayed out and didn't respond. Other times it would light up and respond when I clicked on it but I got an error message. I would like to restore my system back before I connected the two ext hard drives used for file transfering in case that was what caused the problem. Could connecting another new Lacie 1TB USB 3 external drive have caused my problem? I haven't had this problem with other external drives.

First, merely connecting another drive could not have caused Time Machine to stop working.
Since your backup is in a doubtful state, your highest priority should be to protect your data by making another backup to a different drive. You need more than one backup anyway. Connect an empty drive, select it in the TM preference pane, and start a new backup set. Once that's done, I suggest you run "Repair Disk" in Disk Utility on the old backup volume.

One of two external drives never does incremental after unplugging

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