Time Machine Backup Failed - on three Macs. Used to work fine.

Question

"*+Time Machine Error*+
+Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.+"
Last week all three machines were running fine. The Time Machine disk is hooked up to an Airport Extreme running 7.3.2 firmware. I updated it today to 7.4.1 in hopes of fixing the problem. All Macs are on 10.5.6 and have been for a month or more.
When "Backup now" is selected all machines stick on Preparing backup" for a few minutes and then fail.
I'm bummed that this is happening now. I used to use SilverKeeper (free from LaCie). It's faster and more comprehensive, but somehow I got sucked in by Apple's futuristic (historic?) interface. Now, in order to use SilverKeeper I need to erase the Time Machine drive - all 1.2TB.
I don't feel TM is ready for storage of important data. A commercial product would never make it to market if it continually had issues like this. Nearly 10,000 topics in this forum, and a good portion have just plain bad things to say.
I'm sure a lot of people have run into this on their own setups. Has anyone solved the issue? Please help.

Answer 1

Yes, perhaps we're missing something. But I'd rather stick with what works. Here's a software review that pretty much echo's my feelings:
*+I've tried to love Time Machine. I really have. It was one of the reasons I was in an all-fire hurry to upgrade to 10.5. I spent the cash, installed the OS, and immediately set up TM. Or at least I tried to. My new Airport Extreme wasn't allowed to access the USB disk for this purpose.+*
*+But I found a hack and things were good. For about a day. "To **** with it" I thought and went back to Carbon Copy Cloner. An excellent and free app that got me thru years of work with no loss of data. But wait! Now that I upgraded to 10.5 CCC no longer works.+*
*+So I played with it for a few weeks and eventually, I got it to work.... Until Apple released the official software upgrade that allowed Airport Extreme disks to work with TM and it broke again. Another 4 days of playing and reinstalling, and reformatting, and shuffling data. Still nothing.+*
*+****, you should have seen the look on their eyes when I showed up to the Apple store toting my G5 PowerMac Dual, AirPort Extreme, MacBook Pro, wife's MacBook, and two USB drives. AND my Apple ProCare card.+*
*+I took up half the Genius Bar for about 2 hours and still left with a backup scheme that would only partially work. Then, upon arriving home, the IP addresses had changed so I had to repeat half of the steps I barely remembered (and the Genius made up on the fly).+*
*+Finally all was good in the world. Until last week. My wife asked me to send her a picture I took of her with our new puppy at our new house about 6 months ago. I pulled up iPhoto and couldn't locate the picture. "No problem, I've got Time Machine" I thought.+*
*+The story is getting long and you can see where it's going. Not only was the picture missing, but 4 months of pictures were missing. 4 months starting when I stopped using CCC and, even though TM was running, it deleted the oldest files without any warning, any notification, or any reason. In fact the TM drive still had over 400GB free.+*
*+Yes, I had to replace a drive in that 4 month window and yes, I made sure I pulled the data off of Time Machine. HUGE pain in the @ss - it took nearly 4 days to copy the data from TM to the new drive, and apparently a big chunk was lost.+*
*+Finally, the end of my little story. I'm back using CCC. v3 is out and it works with 10.5 and reportedly, 10.6. Four years of using CCC and I've never lost so much as an email (much to the chagrin of my old landlord that emailed me that dogs were perfectly fine, only to try to sue me later).+*
*+For all of those who trust Time Machine, go ahead and try to find a file from a few months ago. It's not as easy as the interface makes it look, and it may not be there at all.+*
*+Time Machine - go sparse yourself. And thanks Bombich software for a superior product in Carbon Copy Cloner.+*