We have a new iMac 5K that keeps backing up it's entire system to time machine.

I was thinking of suggesting wiping and doing a zero-out (one pass security erase) on the goofy drive that should map out any bad sectors, but that could take a day or so on a 5GB drive I would think.




- Patrick
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I did that last time this cropped up, in late July. I just ran Disk Warrior on all the drives and am now allowing the goofy one to do a backup. Will know in a few days if it helped.

David

The problem is that once a drive starts throwing bad sectors, it usually just leads to more and more, until finally something critical disappears in the bad sector pile. Once a drive shows hard errors like that, it's time to replace it.

This is not the first drive to do this on our system, it's the third. Always the second TM backup.

I changed them around and put another in it's place. Always the same result.

David

PS: three newly purchased drives

What happens if you stop using the know good drive? Just use only one drive for a couple of days. see if it still copies 2+ TB each time it backs up. I happen to think it is not creating a complete backup each time it backs up to the drive in question, but we will see.

Personally, I believe, it is like the saying "a watched pot never boils". Set it and forget it, is how TM works.

One other question, would it be bad to wait until the first TM backup drive is full and then just start with the next drive then?

David&karen said:

This is not the first drive to do this on our system, it's the third. Always the second TM backup.

Click to expand...

David&karen said:

I changed them around and put another in it's place. Always the same result.

David

PS: three newly purchased drives

Click to expand...

Personally, as this is all for your backups apparently, I'd forget and loose TM and use something that actually works like CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) or another normal backup cloning application.

Why bother with all the hassles with something that doesn't even work properly. That's just crazy IMHO.




- Patrick
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pm-r said:

Personally, as this is all for your backups apparently, I'd forget and loose TM and use something that actually works like CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) or another normal backup cloning application.

Why bother with all the hassles with something that doesn't even work properly. That's just crazy IMHO.




- Patrick
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Click to expand...

TM is working the way it is intended, it is an issue with the drive, if anything. As has already been posted OP has redundant backups of Time Machine (2 drives) and CCC (2 drives) already in place.

I think at this point I agree with Patrick. Quit with TM, let it make the ONE backup that works, use CCC for two more. I'd set CCC for archiving, which results in something similar to TM, that is, a current backup and a history of older files. Having 4 backups of one set of files is overkill unless you are are storing really, really critical data, in which case you might be better served with a system that stores at least one backup off site, away from your location.

I don't know why TM is working the way it is for you, but with all you've tried, it's not working for you. Life is too short to spend hours on this, IMHO.

We do have an off site BU going. The files are wedding pictures for a home business. Gonna try one last time on the TM. The TM advantage is the CCC could copy a flaw or bug that could become an issue later. The TM allows a roll back to before the bug appeared(we had that happen with a OS X update that was an issue and we just rolled it back).

David

PS like I said we are trying the second TM BU again so we will see.