Time Machine backup schedule expected behavior

What is expected behavior when one is not logged in and/or when computer is asleep? Even with computer set not to sleep, if I am not logged in Time Machine does not initiate a backup.

Katie 'OConnell wrote:
This may be so, but Time Machine DOES say that it will continue backing up files until the hard disk is FULL. That could be a problem if one doesn't have a massive HD that can be dedicated exclusively to this activity, nor tons of money to purchase extra HDs so that Time Machine can back up to its heart's content.
Frankly, I don't need hourly backups and would prefer to eliminate those altogether.
The hourly backups don't really add much space, since they're only kept for a day, but they do protect you better. If you back up less frequently, you can lose more when (not if) your internal HD fails, or something else awful happens to your Mac.
And there's a much better chance of recovering a previous version of a file that you change or delete in error (ever do "Save" instead of "Save As"?), or that somehow gets corrupted.
As noted on the Time Machine Preference window, after 24 hours, it keeps one backup per day (the first) for a month, then one per week as long as there's enough space. After that, it automatically deletes the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones.
It varies widely, of course, depending on how you use your Mac, but Time Machine usually needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up to keep several months, or more, of backups.
By the way, if you're mixing other data with your backups, in the same partition, that's going to be a problem sooner or later, but it's easily avoided by partitioning it. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Message was edited by: Pondini

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What Third Party Software to Modify Time Machine Backup Schedule?

Hello -
I was hoping to get some suggestions to what third party tool to use that will allow me to change the timing of backups from the regular hour intervals. As far as I know that cannot be changed in Time Machine and am looking for suggestions of software that will allow me to modify the schedule.
Thanks in advance...

Katie 'OConnell wrote:
This may be so, but Time Machine DOES say that it will continue backing up files until the hard disk is FULL. That could be a problem if one doesn't have a massive HD that can be dedicated exclusively to this activity, nor tons of money to purchase extra HDs so that Time Machine can back up to its heart's content.
Frankly, I don't need hourly backups and would prefer to eliminate those altogether.
The hourly backups don't really add much space, since they're only kept for a day, but they do protect you better. If you back up less frequently, you can lose more when (not if) your internal HD fails, or something else awful happens to your Mac.
And there's a much better chance of recovering a previous version of a file that you change or delete in error (ever do "Save" instead of "Save As"?), or that somehow gets corrupted.
As noted on the Time Machine Preference window, after 24 hours, it keeps one backup per day (the first) for a month, then one per week as long as there's enough space. After that, it automatically deletes the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones.
It varies widely, of course, depending on how you use your Mac, but Time Machine usually needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up to keep several months, or more, of backups.
By the way, if you're mixing other data with your backups, in the same partition, that's going to be a problem sooner or later, but it's easily avoided by partitioning it. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Message was edited by: Pondini

Time Machine backup behavior erratic, now not working at all

[ Using Lion 10.7.2 on a Macbook Pro 15" with 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM. ]
The Macbook is connected to our home LAN, and I have been using (since September) a Synology NAS drive on the network which is set up as the Time Machine backup drive. Most of the time for these past months it has been fine; some issues initially with connectivity which were finally solved by using a static IP address for the NAS.
Recently it did the first strange thing. It had been performing incremental backups as normal, when a message came up saying the backup was unreliable and it needed to carry out a complete new backup. Anyway - no drama - I took it up and plugged it into the router to speed up the transfer (around 200GB on the drive). It worked fine and thereafter it went back to doing incremental backups normally.
Yesterday morning I noticed it was apparently running and running without progress, clicking on the bar icon revealed that TM was "Preparing Backup"; this state continued for several hours. So I stopped the backup, restarted the machine, and then last night at 22h00 I restarted it - by 08h00 this morning, ten hours later, it was still "Preparing Backup", so clearly something is wrong.
The NAS drive is accessible, ie.
- The 'Time Machine Backups' icon for the drive has appeared on the desktop
' The 'Diskstation (Time Machine)' is available in Finder under 'shared'
So this seems to be something to with Lion and/or with Time Machine.
Considering the infrastructure environment has been stable for months, the IP address of the drive is static, there appear to be no network connectivity problems... I am at a loss as to why now this irritating behaviour and, more to the point, at the moment I cannot make the Mac backup. I would be happy to do another full backup but, really, should not be necessary since this only happened (due to the recently problem) a few weeks back - and anyway what's the point of automated incremental backup if (a) it doesn't work reliably and (b) every 2-3 weeks you have to manually perform a full backup anyway??!!
Thanks in advance
Alastair

Alastair Mac wrote:
thanks. unfortunately a locally attached drive isn't a option that will work well for me (too long to explain, but it just won't - personal logistics rather than technology issues).
Are you sure about that? I have a Time Capsule (2nd hand) but I've switched back to a locally attached disk with Lion. Lion's new mobile backups provide some measure of backups when not connected to the backup drive. It protects against accidental deletions, but not hardware failure. Plus, the new bootable recovery partition in Time Machine and encryption tip the balance back in favor of the local drive - for me at least.
1. does it make sense to you that, until yesterday, it was working fine and then quite suddenly it stopped working?
I will say that it isn't surprising. There are some changes in Lion that affect networked Time Machine devices. The early versions of Lion got pretty annoying. 10.7.2 seemed to be better. I had to erase my Time Machine drive a couple of times and do new backups when it decided it needed to keep rebuilding the Spotlight index. Unless you connect with Ethernet, the reindexing will never finish. In your case, I would expect a 3rd party, flaky open-source product to perform even worse.
2. in my specific situation (going around and around "preparing backup" without any progress even in 24hrs of preparing, what can i do to restart the backup process? even if it means doing a clean backup i.e. junking the old one, i would live with it as at present (touch wood) my hard drive is OK and i have no historical version recovery issues.
With Time Machine, the only quick and easy way to reset things is to erase the Time Machine volume.
3. did apple / synology reach a point in previous releases of OSX and DSM which was stable and DID work, despite the need to use Netatalk? in other words, if i soldier on patiently, is it likely this will eventually get solved? or will this be a perennial problem? in the end, if twice a year i have to intervene, it doesn't really matter PROVIDED the backup itself is intact should the HD finally die. of course, if i have to intervene every couple of days, i may as well do it all manually.
I can't really answer that. I used Netatalk briefly several years ago and it scrambled my files. It has certainly improved somewhat, but obviously isn't stable. The part that really annoys me is that the change that Apple introduced in Lion wasn't really new. Apple introduced a more secure version of the AFP protocol 9 years ago. In Lion, all they did was make that more secure protocol the default and disabled the older protocols. There are a number of hacks that have been posted (sometimes by me) about how to set a flag in Lion so that it will continue to use the older protocol.
Synology seems to have better Mac support that some NAS vendors. Still, there was no reason they had to wait so long to update their software. Developers have had access to Lion for almost a whole year.
I would expect that companies would be always trying to improve their products, but the evidence doesn't support that assumption. I don't like Netatalk's shady open source extortion practices, but then no one else has stepped up to fund a stable open-source implementation of AppleTalk. People tend to blame Apple but they published the new specifications a decade ago and no one bothered to read them. Why should they care?
Personally, I think backups are too important to rely on such flaky software. I really like Time Machine but it is pretty complicated. Apple is able to make it functional over a network, but just barely. If you are using a 3rd party NAS, my suggestion would be to use NFS instead and backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Even if you want to continue to try using Time Machine, a Carbon Copy Cloner backup would be a good thing to have too.

Time Machine backups are bigger than expected

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone would know why, all of a sudden after a day or two ago, my Time Machine is suddenly insisting on backing up well over 4GB at a time? Before then my backups would almost always be below the 100MB mark. Has some update happened that would have caused this?
I have looked in Console but unfortunately am none the wiser. Is there some way of finding out a list of the files Time Machine is actually backing up? If so then I'd be able to track down this problem since I am fast running out of space on my Time Machine backup drive!
Many thanks for listening...
:-Joe

Jowie,
Consider the following info that I have gleaned, some of it may explain some it.
*Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!*
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412)
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer may be describing what you are experiencing: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder it you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.

"No such file or directory" errors on Time Machine backup volume

I remotely mounted the Time Machine backup volume onto another Mac and was looking around it in a Terminal window and discovered what appeared to be a funny problem. If I "cd" into some folders (but not all) and do a "ls -la" command, I get a lot of "No such file or directory" errors for all the subfolders, but all the files look fine. Yet if I go log onto the Mac that has the backup volume mounted as a local volume, these errors never appear for the exact same location. Even more weird is that if I do "ls -a" everything appears normal on both systems (no error messages anyway).
It appears to be the case that the folders that have the problem are folders that Time Machine has created as "hard links" to other folders which is something that Time Machine does and is only available as of Mac OS X 10.5 and is the secret behind how it avoids using up disk space for files that are the same in the different backups.
I moved the Time Machine disk to the second Mac and mounted the volume locally onto it (the second Mac that was showing the problems), so that now the volume is local to it instead of a remote mounted volume via AFP and the problem goes away, and if I do a remote mount on the first Mac of the Time Machine volume the problem appears on the first Mac system that was OK - so basically by switching the volume the problem switches also on who shows the "no such file or directory" errors.
Because of the way the problem occurs, ie only when the volume is remote mounted, it would appear to be an issue with AFP mounted volumes that contain these "hard links" to folders.
There is utility program written by Amit Singh, the fella who wrote the "Mac OS X Internals" book, called hfsdebug (you can get it from his website if you want - just do a web search for "Mac OS X Internals hfsdebug" if you want to find it ). If you use it to get a little bit more info on what's going on, it shows a lot of details about one of the problematic folders. Here is what things look like on the first Mac (mac1) with the Time Machine locally mounted:
mac1:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac1:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 48
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 12 me staff 442 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 104 me staff 7378 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 19 me staff 850 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac1:xxx me$ hfsdebug Documents/ | head
<Catalog B-Tree node = 12589 (sector 0x18837)>
path = MyBackups:/yyy/xxx/Documents
# Catalog File Record
type = file (alias, directory hard link)
indirect folder = MyBackups:/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135
file ID = 728505
flags = 0000000000100010
. File has a thread record in the catalog.
. File has hardlink chain.
reserved1 = 0 (first link ID)
mac1:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac1:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
total 17720
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
146 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 68 Feb 17 2009 .parallels-vm-directory
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
148 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 136 Aug 28 2009 ACPI
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
So you can see from the first few lines of the "ls -a" command, it shows some file/folders but you can't tell which yet. The next "ls -la" command shows which names are files and folders - that there are some folders (like ACPI) and some files (like A.txt and A9.txt) and all looks normal. And the "hfsdebug" info shows some details of what is really happening in the "Documents" folder, but more about that in a bit.
And here are what a "ls -a" and "ls -al" look like for the same locations on the second Mac (mac2) where the Time Machine volume is remote mounted:
mac2:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac2:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac2:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 56
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 13 me staff 398 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 217 me staff 7334 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 25 me staff 806 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac2:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac2:Documents me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac2:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
ls: .parallels-vm-directory: No such file or directory
ls: ACPI: No such file or directory
... many more "ls: ddd: No such file or directory" error messages appear - there is a one-to-one
correspondence between the "ddd" folders and the "no such file or directory" error messages
total 17912
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
If you look very close a hint as to what is going on is obvious - the inode for the Documents folder is 152 on the local mounted case (the first set of code above for mac1), and it's 728505 in the remote mounted case for mac2. So it appears that these "hard links" to folders have an extra level of folder that is hidden from you and that AFP fails to take into account, and that is what the "hfsdebug" shows even better as you can clearly see the REAL location of the Documents folder is in something called "/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135" that is not even visible to the shell. And if you look closely in the remote mac2 case, when I did the "cd Documents" I don't go into the inode 135, but into the inode 728505 (look close at the "." entry for the "ls -la" commands on both mac1 and mac2) which is the REAL problem, but have no idea how to get AFP to follow the extra level of indirection.
Anyone have any ideas how to fix this so that "ls -l" commands don't generate these "no such file or folder" messages?
I am guessing that the issue is really something to do with AFP (Apple File Protocol) mounted remote volumes. The TimeMachine example is something that I used as an example that anyone could verify the problem. The real problem for me has nothing to do with Time Machine, but has to do with some hard links to folders that I created on another file system totally separate from the Time Machine volume. They exhibit the same problem as these Time Machine created folders, so am pretty sure the problem has nothing to do with how I created hard links to folders which is not doable normally without writing a super simple little 10 line program using the link() system call - do a "man 2 link" if you are curious how it works.
I'm well aware of the issues and the conditions when they can and can't be used and the potential hazards. I have an issue in which they are the best way to solve a problem. And after the problem was solved, is when I noticed this issue that appears to be a by-product of using them.
Do not try these hard links to folders on your own without knowing what they're for and how to use them and not use them. They can cause real problems if not used correctly. So if you decide to try them out and you loose some files or your entire drive, don't say I didn't warn you first.
Thanks ...
-Bob

The problem is Mac to Mac - the volume that I'm having the issue with is not related in any way to Time Machine or to TimeCapsule. The reference to TIme Machine is just to illustrate the problem exists outside of my own personal work with hard links to folders on HFS Extended volumes (case-sensitive in this particular case in case that matters).
I'm not too excited about the idea of snooping AFP protocol to discover anything that might be learned there.
The most significant clue that I've seen so far has to do with the inode numbers for the two folders shown in the Terminal window snippets in the original post. The local mounted case uses the inode=728505 of the problematic folder which is in turn linked to the hidden original inode of 135 via the super-secret /.HFS+... folder that you can't see unless using something like the "hfsdebug" program I mentioned.
The remote mounted case uses the inode=728505 but does not make the additional jump to the inode=135 which is where lower level folders appear to be physically stored.
Hence the behavior that is seen - the local mounted case is happy and shows what would be expected and the remote mounted case shows only files contained in the problem folder but not lower-level folders or their contents.
From my little knowledge of how these inode entries really work, I think that they are some sort of linked list chain of values, so that you have to follow the entire chain to get at what you're looking for. If the chain is broken somewhere along the line or not followed correctly, things like this can happen. I think this is a case of things not being followed correctly, as if it were a broken chain problem then the local mounted case would have problems also.
But the information for this link in the chain is there (from 728505 to the magic-135) but for some reason AFP doesn't make this extra jump.
Yesterday I heard back from Apple tech support and they have confirmed this problem and say that it is a "implementation limitation" with the AFP client. I think it's a bug, but that will have to be up to Apple to decide now that it's been reported. I just finished reporting this as a bug via the Apple Bug Reporter web site -- it's bug id 8926401 if you want to keep track it.
Thanks for the insights...
-Bob

Time machine backups no longer include hidden system folder like /usr and /sbin

My Time Machine backups Aug - Oct seem complete. When I look at them I see all the expected folders and files. Starting in November key system folders disappeared: /sbin, /usr, /bin, etc. However, the non-hidden one are there: /Applications, /Library, etc. Later in November certain things show up again like /usr/share/man/whatis and /usr/share/man/ri, but nothing else under /usr/share. I've looked for all possible places where folders might be excluded and have found nothing.
I'm using Mavericks on a MacBook Pro with a Time Capsule. All software and firmware are completely up to date. I can't explain the behavior. If I take one example I can see /usr in the Nov 5 backup and it is fully populated. It is gone in the Nov 12 backup. In the Nov 19 backup it is back but only with /usr/share/man/whatis. There are no errors in my logs although my logs don't go back that far, so if something happened the week of Nov 5 I don't know.
Anyone with any guesses?
K-Family

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Time Machine backup slow (not first backup) - Why?

Hi, I recently purchased a new 3TB backup drive to backup my iMac system (10.9.4).
I set up a Time Machine backup of my system + external HD, and began scheduled backups about a week ago. As expected the first backup took several hours (overnight) since it was backing up nearly 1TB of data. Subsequent backups were fast and everything seemed fine.
Then, last night I ran a backup and Time Machine began to copy ALL the data again. The backup took 6-7 hours. Why would it do this if it uses a cumulative system where most of the data is already on the backup drive? Did this occur because I manually started the backup (by selecting"Back Up Now" in Time Machine on the toolbar). Or is something wrong?
Thanks
Tom

Open Time Machine Preferences>click "Select Disk">click on the appropriate TM disk under the bottom window titled "Available Disks." Force a backup and see if it works. If this doesn't fix it reboot your iMac and/or Time Capsule and try forcing a backup again once the iMac and/or TC have fully booted up.

Retrieving a Time Machina backup on Tiger

I recently went back to Tiger from Leopard because I was sick of the problems. Anyways, I have all my music on my Time Machine backup, but I can't seem to drag and drop it to my music folder. Is there a way to do this?

Just to clarify, hard links, at least at the file level, have been part of UNIX as long as I've been working with it. I haven't used them in Darwin, but I would expect they have been there all along.
You should test copying an easily readable file from your Time Machine backup to your Tiger installation (would want this to be copied to a disk other than the Time Machine backup disk) and verify it copies cleanly and you can read it.
If that works you should be able to pick a date & time (via the Time Machine folder names) and drill down and copy the desired folder back to you Tiger hard drive.
I haven't tested any of this, but based on expected UNIX behavior this should work.
Unlike soft links or aliases that are merely pointers to a file, hard links are like a duplicate directory entry that points to the same physical file location. Hard links are virtually indistinguishable from each other for a given file so it gets kind of confusing which entry corresponds to when the file was first created on the Time Machine disk. Any of the hard links you chose to copy for a given file should result in copying that file to a new location.
The UNIX ln (elle n) command is what I believe Time Machine is making extensive use of under the covers, you can learn more by typing 'man ln' in terminal. The first full back up does in fact copy everything from the user's hard drive to the Time Machine disk. From that point forward new top level folders are created for each backup, and any changed files are actually copied to the the corresponding location in that high level / datetime folder on the Time Machine disk, and unchanged files simply have a hard link created to the existing version of that file on the Time Machine disk.
Where things get kind of tough is if you have rather large files that change fairly frequently (like Virtual Machine files, or large media projects) since a new copy of those will be created each time Time Machine runs and that file has changed.
I'm still waiting for the first time that Time Machine needs to free up space on my backup disk to see what gets deleted. I'm backing up 2 Virtual machines, my OS install and a modest amount of personal data with Time Machine. I have been pretty careful about excluding directories that contain very large files that don't actually need backing up, and so far so good on Time Machine Disk space.
I'm sure there is more involved, but Time Machine seem like a clever way to leverage functionality that UNIX has had for years.

Time Machine Backup only one-fifth the size of my disk. Where's the rest?

I have a startup disk with about 250 gigs in my G5 dual. I have a 500 GB disk for Time Machine. It runs when it's supposed to and I've used it to recover a few lost files successfully. I felt safe until I noticed that the Time Machine disk has only about 50 GB on it! How is this possible? What do I need to do?
When I click on options in the TIme Machine preference pane, I see the Time Machine Backups disk excluded (as I would expect) and I have excluded an additional disk, and it says in the lower right "Total included: 250.0 GB" What is going on? I feel as if I definitely cannot rely on Time Machine if I had to do a complete restore. I'd be missing 80% of my files!

If Time Machine runs into a problem with a corrupted file, it may skip the balance of the entire folder holding that file (or more), and then if there are no changes in the folder it is skipping, it doesn't pick up on it in later backups. Obviously this is not ideal behavior, but that's the way it works right now.
Here's what you can do:
Reboot from your Leopard install DVD (hold the "c" key while booting until you see the spinning gear on the gray Apple screen, and, if the DVD is not already inserted, insert it just after you press and release the power button).
When asked, select your language.
At the next screen, where you would normally begin an Install, INSTEAD Quit out of the Leopard Installer using the menu bar. Select your main hard drive as the drive to boot from.
When it boots up, log in as normal. Then open Applications / Utilities / Console and select "All Messages" in the column on the left. If this is the first time you've done this, it will take a while to get itself organized and the initial list of messages may be empty.
Then open System Preferences / Time Machine so you can watch what is happening.
Then right-click (or CTRL-click) on the Time Machine icon in the Dock and select Back Up Now from the pop up menu.
Booting from the Leopard install DVD like this will cause Time Machine to ignore the file system event logs of what's changed (because the drive may have been altered without those logs reflecting it), and instead do a Deep Traversal of your main hard drive's file system looking at everything for changes since the last backup. You will see a message to this effect in the Console. Time Machine's "preparing" stage will be unusually long -- for your size of file system it could be an hour or so -- but eventually it will finish the Deep Traversal and it will backup whatever needs to be backed up.
NOW, look at the Console for any error messages during this. The infamous -1088 error is the one most people have found. That indicates a file Time Machine has decided is corrupted -- causing it to give up on a folder. Get rid of those files/folders or put them in the Do Not Back Up list, and do another backup until you have no more such errors.
You should now have a complete backup on your Time Machine disk.
--Bob

Restore from Time Machine backup is failing

The internal drive on my daughter's iMac has failed for the second time in less than two years. I'm not able to restore from the Time Machine backup. The Time Machine restore process failed last time as well. Not surprisingly I'm now questioning whether Time Machine is an appropriate backup solution.
First question: *Is Time Machine a reliable backup and restore solution?*
- I get no errors whatsoever during backup from Time Machine
- Have yet to successfully be able to restore system (TM is 0 for 2 for us)
Second question: *Is it an issue with my setup?*
Based on the Macs and other items I already had, the setup that the local Apple store recommended to me for backup is what I followed. Here's a summary:
- 4 Macs on a network with Airport Extreme for router/wireless access
- Mac mini with 10TB of external storage has one 2 TB drive setup as a centralized Time Machine drive, which all the Macs on the network connect to
Backups all work with no error messages. Restoring individual files here and there through Time Machine has worked fine. Never really needed, but I tested it a few times from each Mac just to ensure everything was working fine.
Unfortunately, when my daughter's iMac internal drive failed I discovered that the restore not work. First issue was that restoring the system during OS X install was not an option because I was not able to get it to use the network drive. I was told to go ahead and install OS-X and then use the migration assistant, which unfortunately didn't work. Summary of what happened:
- My account on the iMac was successfully restored
- The main account with all the critical data (my daughter's) was created, but none of her data (iTunes music, school work, photos, etc) were restored
- No error message at the end of the restore
I know the Time Machine backup for her account was working as I had specifically checked to make sure that her iTunes music and photos were included in the backup just a week ago. Since the backup was being done to a drive connected to another Mac on the network, her iMac's backup was stored as a sparsebundle. In speaking with Apple support this morning, they had me try to mount the backup by double-clicking on the sparsebundle, which results in an error message indicating that it is corrupt. ARG!
After two failed restores, I'm convinced I need to change the setup either moving to drives directly connected to each Mac (seems like a waste) using Time Machine or switch to another backup tool.
What are your recommendations?

It may be helpful for others for me to post the approach I've decided to take, which seems to be working well.
Background:
I've confirmed with an Apple genius and with support, that the likely issue with both of the failed TM restores is that the TM backup was corrupted by the drive failures. Files get corrupted and are backed up to the drive. That is why in both cases it is the specific account that was running (also the highest priority for restore) is the one that is corrupted.
In nearly 3 decades of computing, I've yet to ever need to restore a single file or folder that I accidentally deleted. It's just not a scenario I care about. TM seems to fit this requirement well and has a very cool user experience to do it. Unfortunately, it also seems to have a tendency (0 for 2 in my case) to fail at restoring after drive failure.
Decision: no TM in my back up approach.
My primary need is for backup in case of drive failure. I also have some files that are extremely important that I want redundant backup for.
Decision:
1. ChronoSync for bootable backup clone of drives scheduled monthly and done over the home network. Can easily be triggered manually if there is a big change (SL install, etc) that I want to make sure is included
2. ChronoSync based sync of just critical files to a shared network drive that syncs daily. This is actually a large amount of data and includes family photos (Lightroom catalog and all photos), iTunes libraries, PLEX media library and other user created files.
Pluses:
1. Allows me to keep drives centrally located, which is definitely preferable for me
2. Easy rotation of drives with critical files for offsite storage
3. Over the network sync is fully supported by ChronoSync
4. Easy yet highly configurable UI. Unlike with TM I'm finding I can get the software to do precisely what I want, when I want.
Cons:
1. $40 cost for ChronoSync
I also looked at SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner.
I tried implementing the above first with SuperDuper, but found the setup confusing and the overall execution and sync was not what I expected. For example, SuperDuper encountered some file errors and just halted the sync as a result.
I tried Carbon Copy Cloner next. The setup was more intuitive than SuperDuper; even though the UI is not as polished. I kept the offending files on the drive to see how CCC handled them. It did much better in that it identified the file issues, but completed the sync for the rest to the files on the system. Clear error message at the end with summary information and the ability to look at the details in the log.
Since I wasn't thrilled with either SD or CCC, I decided to check out ChronoSync. For me, it does a very good job of presenting a simple UI with the ability as need arrises to get in to adjust and fine tune the specifics (options, configuration, schedule, etc) to precisely what I want. Scheduling, including sequencing, is very well done. Performance was the best of the three. Full cloning and incremental sync/backups with ChronoSync were the fastest. Not really an issue for me, but still a plus. A big plus for ChronoSync was that it did by far the best job of maintaining file permissions. SuperDuper did the worst. For some reason after all three uses of SuperDuper with the backup approach above many of the original files had user and file permission changes. For example, user name was "Rachel" with Read/Write access. After sync/clone, user became "_unknown" with read/write access. CCC did a better job; though I did have a number of issues when using cloned drive to boot (these were resolved) and with restore some file permissions were not maintained.
I really think Apple (at least retail and genius employees) should be clearer about the limitations and issues with TM. After my first failed restore, I was told it was an unusual and very rare case. I was assured that the approach (including using a network drive was fine). With a second failed restore from TM, it became crystal clear in my opinion that this is not a very rare occurrence; and that there are fundamental aspects of TM that make it susceptible to backup corruption when a drive fails.
TM is a sexy solution for incremental file backup and restore when you accidentally delete a file or folder. If that's what you need, go for it. As part of a backup solution for drive failure? I just don't see the value UNLESS you want to have incremental hourly, daily, weekly, monthly backups that you can use for accidental deletions. The accumulation of all those snapshots ends up taking up a fair bit of space. I was surprised at my actual backup storage needs in my switch to the above approach.
Your needs are likely unique to you, so your mileage may vary. This is just my perspective after a fair bit of pain and a lot of discussion, reading and testing.

Can I exclude places.sqlite from time machine backup?

Hi,
Just looking at the time machine backup and raised a question about the repeated backup of places.sqlite in "~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/", I am wondering if I can exclude this file from my backup or even exclude Profiles from my backup?
What would this affect my backup? Are these all essentials?
I have looked into this page and understand what places.sqlite does. However, what don't know is if this file is missing, does Firefox produce one automatically?
Or say, if each of my places.sqlite in the prevoius backups was like 90MB, how much size would them really take in the storage?

Alvyn wrote:
Thus, I am thinking if this "places.sqlite" thing is there every hour putting around 100MB to my time capsule, quickly my time capsule will be depleted.
No, that's very small.
Is there any way to do something like trimming time points from time capsule?
Under normal circumstances, you shouldn't have to. TM automatically "thins" (deletes) backups every time it does a new backup, on the following schedule:
"Hourly" backups after 24 hours (except the first of the day, which is a "Daily" backup).
"Daily" backups after a month (except the first of each week, which is a "Weekly" backup.)
"Weekly" backups are kept until TM needs the space for new backups; then one or more of the oldest weeklies will be deleted.
So after a month, even if you do an hourly backup every day, and that 100 mb file is changed and backed-up +*every time+* (not real likely), you'd have 54 backups (1 per day plus 24). That would take a total of 5.4 GB, small potatoes on any TM drive, and really not worth worrying about.
But if you want, you could delete all the backups of it. See #12 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

I'm having a problem with logging into a FileVault-protected user account after restoring from Time Machine backup.

Hi all,
My computer had been running really slowly for a while, so I decided to erase the whole hard drive and reinstall the operating system, and then I was going to restore the files I cared about from Time Machine. The main account, which had all my documents and photos, was FileVault-protected. The last thing I did before erasing the hard drive was to run one last Time Machine backup. As far as I remember, I always ran Time Machine backups with the FileVaulted user logged in.
I don't remember whether I was using FileVault 1 or 2. I had been using FileVault 1, but I installed Lion as soon as it came out and I thought I had migrated to FileVault 2 at that point.
Once I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system, I browsed the Time Machine disk and, within the Users folder, there was no folder for the main user account. When I tried to reinstall everything by restoring from Time Machine backup, I'd get the option for all the user accounts, but when I tried to log in with the main one I'd get the dreaded "You are unable to log in to the FileVault user account "User" at this time. Log in failed because an error occurred." Finally, when attempting to restore from the Time Machine backup again, I noticed something strange: After the computer got to about 10% done restoring, it declared itself completed successfully and rebooted.
I've tried a number of tips that came up from questions about similar issues on the Apple support forum, but had no luck. Is there any way to get these files back? Did they ever even get backed up?
Thanks.

Hroodbwai wrote:
I can't find it! not sure what's going on but the only folder shown is the " Shared" folder.
Did you have only the one user account? If there were others, they should also be in the "Users" folder. You probably won't have access to the files inside them, but they should be there.
From what can make out, it looks like it's not backed up any of the files for the filevault account. Can't see user folder when looking through previous backups in Time Machine galaxy view.
Are you doing that from a Finder window set to your internal HD, or your computer name? It should look something like this (with the Finder in List view):
|
|
I'd been logging out and backing up manually on a regular basis.
Scheduled backups should run normally; but they won't back up the File Vault sparse bundle, nor will any run manually.
The only time it's backed-up is when you actually log out.
You should have seen this window on logout:
|
|
followed by this one:
|
|
If you didn't see the second one, or cancelled it, the account wasn't backed-up.

First time machine backup from MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011) on time capsule is extremely slow - unusable!

I recently bought a Time Capsule 2TB.
First I set it up to create a new wifi network parallel to my existing wifi network. The first Time Machine backup on my MBP 13 connected via ethernet cable finished overnight (under 10 hrs for about 150 GB), as expected.
Then I found that my MBP was logging into my old network more often than to the time capsule network so that backups were not being made regularly. So I re-configured the Time Capsule to extend the exisitng network - all fine. Except that now Time Machine said it couldn't find the existing backup. After trying logging out and in, etc. I eventually deleted that sparsebundle to force Time Machine to start again new.
Now I get an estimated time of 2 - 3 days for the first backup - even via ethernet cable. Sometimes it hangs up and says something like 4000 days... I can't afford to hook my MBP up to the time capsule or even stay at home for this time to let it finish, and I know it should be faster than that!
I've tried a few of the tips I found so far in the forums, such as excluding my home folder from Spotlight, or even turning Spotlight off, but nothing has helped so far. Perhaps I missed some important step on the way.
Can anyone give me a reliable step by tep method to solve this problem. I don't want a geeky workaround, I want to plug in (o better, be in my wifi network) and make the backup work like Time Machine is supposed to do it. And I would like to keep on using Spotlight, too.
Thanks in advance!
Robin

Unless you have a desktop Mac you can back up to over your network, your choices are:
Spend a bunch on a Time Capsule, kind of a waste if you already have a wireless router.
Spend $100 or so on an external HD and have some inconvenience until Iomega updates.
Risk losing all your data.
It's your call, but a no-brainer to me.
Better: get a portable external. Once you get the Iomega working, start making regular "clones" to the portable and take it off-site so you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, etc.

How do I connect Airport Extreme and Time Capsule to my new iMac so that AE is used for network and TC only used for Time Machine backup?

I didn't realize that Time Capsule will only support the print function of a wireless multifunction printer. So I want to use Extreme for my network to have full use of my printer and use TC as the Time machine backup only. How to I make the connections?

Thanks for your response and this is getting complicated but I just purchased a new iMac as well as the Airport TC. I've had the Airport Extreme for a year or so. The Airport Extreme worked perfectly with my old iMac wirelessly and I had all functions of my printer with no problems. I was expecting the same with the TC. But the instruction that came with TC say to connect the printer to the TC via USB...which I did. And the print function worked perfectly but nothing else. In researching I discovered that when wired that way the TC only supports the print function...not scan or fax or anything else. I tried going wireless since my AE worked perfectly via wireless but I got no printer functions at all that way. But I'm wondering also if I tried that during a time I was having other issues...I had to delete and re-add my printer which solved some other problems. I may try that again...and see if I can get all print functions with just the TC connected
As far as connecting both your AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule on your network, we're not clear on exactly how you want to do this. Will the AirPort Extreme connect to your modem using an Ethernet cable and the Time Capsule connect to the AirPort Extreme using an Ethernet cable?.......or......do you want the Time Capsule to connect to the network using wireless?
Well... first of all I would like not to have to use the AE at all...I would prefer using just my TC for network, all print functions and Time Machine backup if that's possible. My printer will not accept Ethernet connections (Canon MX512).
After failing at getting this to work, I decided I would try to use my AE for net and print functions and just use my TC for Time Machine backup. I tried several different connection configurations with no success until finally I connected cable modem to my AE via Ethernet and went wireless with the AE and printer. but connected the AE to the TC via Ethernet and amazingly everything worked like a charm (for a while) and I was patting myself on the back for being so smart. But now I find that the connection only lasts for a short time. If I leave it for a while the TC goes invisible...or at least I see a message saying the Ethernet is unplugged...but it is not... and I lose internet connection even though I have a green light on my AE. So now I'm at a loss. I don't know why I keep losing network signal and why my system thinks the Ethernet is unplugged.
So... after all this...I figured I wasn't so smart after all and I must have things wired incorrectly.
So... it sounds like you are saying I should go back and try again to get my new TC to work as I want it to via wireless instead of connecting via USB...is that correct? Could you tell me exactly how I should wire my equipment from cable modem to AE and/or TC to achieve net capability, full functions of my printer and Time Machine backup...
Thanks...

Can I have two Time Machine backup external drives on one Mac?

I have been using Time Machine for over a year and like it very much. The thought occurred to me that I should buy a new external drive that I can backup to and store at a remote location. I plan on making a backup each week, then taking this new drive to my office. That way, if my house ever burns down, I have a backup at my office too that will be a fairly recent backup.
When I unplugged my older external drive and tried to launch a backup using the new one, my Mac said it couldn't find my Time Machine drive. Won't it let me backup to two different drives? Or does it always need to backup to the same one?
Thanks!

polishedstaple wrote:
Won't it let me backup to two different drives?
Yes. All you have to do is tell it you've changed destinations, via +Time Machine Preferences > Select Disk.+ (Use different names for the drives, so you know which one is which.)
Try not to go too long between "swaps," though. After several days, especially if there's been a large volume of changes, Time Machine might do a new, full backup, instead of an incremental one.
However, I've learned over the years (mostly the hard way, of course ), never to trust my backups to a single app or piece of hardware: no app is perfect, and all hardware fails, sooner or later.
Like many here, I keep both full Time Machine backups, plus a "bootable clone" on a separate external HD. I use CarbonCopyCloner, many use the similar SuperDuper. That gives me the best of both types of backups, plus of course a completely separate, independent backup.
CCC is donationware; SD has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling. Either is easily found via Google.
And/or, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.

Time Machine backup schedule expected behavior

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