Possible Time Machine Error?

[Mwindow]

I tried to perform a Time Machine backup today and after the usual 'verifying backup' stage got the following message:

"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.

Click Start New Backup to create a new backup. This will remove your existing backup history. This could take several hours.

Click Back Up Later to be reminded tomorrow. Time Machine won’t perform backups during this time."

I clicked back up later as I don't really want to have to start again from fresh, because it took 19 hours to perform its initial backup and I'm not confident that it isn't going to happen again.

What is causing this message/error? Is starting fresh my only option? Time Machine has never had any problems when backing up before and I can 'enter Time Machine' and restore files from it as normal.

Help from the Apple bods (Tom, Chris, Revels) or anyone who has experienced this message before would be greatly appreciated.

Merry Christmas,
Matt

 

[sn00p]

Welcome to the world of time machine corruptions.

You'll probably find (if you're lucky) that you can still mount the time machine image. You might be able to use disk utility to repair it, but I'd cut my losses and start a new backup.

 

[Adam.]

Time machine is pretty weak.

 

[.Simon]

I get this approximately every two months, annoying as hell but there's nothing you can do to stop it happening iirc.

 

[sn00p]

I've covered this a million times here, the way that time machine backs up (sparse bundle over afp) is really not very clever at all. It supposedly has extensions to ensure reliability, but due to the way it works, it's still very possible to see corruptions.

I wouldn't trust just a time machine backup on its own at all. We do use time machine at work, however, the time machine backups are backed up incrementally to another drive using hard links for and changed parts of the sparse image. This means that we can always get back to a completely working time machine backup.

We also never rely on them, all important files/data is rsync'd to the backup server. The time machine backup serves as a convenience should something catastrophic happen, but if the time machine backup happens to be fubared, then no biggie, it's just a bit more effort required with reinstalling apps and such like.

 

[SC03OTT]

Are people talking about Time Machine or Time Capsule being weak?

 

[Mwindow]

Are people talking about Time Machine or Time Capsule being weak?

I referred to Time Capsule in my OP. I'm backing up to a Synology DS211j.

From reports I've read on various forums (including this one) and from I've personally seen of the Time Capsule it is a very unreliable piece of kit.

 

[.Simon]

I'm talking about Time Machine ..

 

[Gavin.]

Mine messed up the other day and decided it was going to wipe the full backup and start again. I have buggered it off and trying Carbon Copy instead.

 

[sn00p]

Time machine is s**t.

Early time capsules were prone to hardware failure.

All time capsules are prone to corruptions because they use time machine for backing up.

Nice idea, poor execution.

 

[Mwindow]

I referred to Time Capsule in my OP. I'm backing up to a Synology DS211j.

From reports I've read on various forums (including this one) and from I've personally seen of the Time Capsule it is a very unreliable piece of kit.

D'oh! I meant Time Machine! I was referring to Time Machine in my OP, not Time Capsule.

 

[Adam.]

Mine messed up the other day and decided it was going to wipe the full backup and start again. I have buggered it off and trying Carbon Copy instead.

CarbonCopy is ace. I use it at work a lot whenever we get something in with a hardware fault.

 

[bozothenutter]

have you called the doctor?

 

[Munson]

I find Time Machine great for recovering the odd file here or there, but I wouldn't rely on it for mission critical data. Anything I really cannot afford to lose, also gets backed up by traditional copy & paste, to at least one other external drive.

I seem to remember having a fair few problems with Time Machine corruption when I fresh-installed Lion. Or rather incompatibilities between the old data and the new system. In the end, most of critical stuff was recovered from a proper backup, or manually from TM folders on the disc.

It's a nice tool and works well for the most part, but do not rely on it as your sole backup solution.

 

[Mwindow]

I've lost all faith in Time Machine now.

I did a all full backup on the 26th, it did a few incremental backups for changes with out any problems, and then on the 28th it gave the same error / message as above, saying that it needed to do a full backup again.

I started it this morning and it now saying that it will take 335,707 days to backup 58.99 GB. What a joke! The network is fine, browsing the net, downloading files, accessing the NAS, etc. all work as they should with no slow down.

 

[.Simon]

Could be worse.

 

[Gavin.]

CarbonCopy is ace. I use it at work a lot whenever we get something in with a hardware fault.

Its seems ok tbh, no issues as of yet.

 

[TheEvilGiraffe]

Didn't want to start a new thread...

My iMac has been happily filling up my external HDD since I bought it at the end of last year.

I split a 1TB in two and use half for personal back up / storage and the other half is left to Time Machine's needs.

Today, I'm getting this annoying message keep popping up:



I go into preferences as it shows me, and there's no options to do anything it suggests.

I tell it to delete old ones, but it seems to ignore me and lo and behold, the same message comes back.

Any freakin' ideas, Apple gurus ?!

Losing my mind here.


Thanks.