Time Machine.

[sllewk]

Good morning one and all, I am having trouble with Time Machine in as much as I keep getting nag boards telling me TM has failed on it's hourly? run. Question:- do I really need a backup every hour? If not how do I cancel it, is it possible to reschedule time machine or must it be allowed to "do it's own thing"? It seems a wee bit 'over kill' to back up every hour (or am I wrong here?). SuperDuper has started to play silly thingies as well so I have removed the hard drive. That has STOPPED IT!!! Needs must when the Devil drives! I do not have ANY important files etc on my Apple iMac or my laptop.

Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Time Machine back ups on the hour on its own. You can't tweak that. But technically, if the current hour's backup fails, it should hopefully catch up the next hour and be OK.

You want to check closer if it continually fails every hour.

Also, depending on how you are connecting the backup drive, you might have temporary connection glitches that cause the backup to fail. For example, I use my NAS as the backup drive and if NAS were to turn off for some reason or be inaccessible over the network, the backups will fail.

 

[sllewk]

Ashwin, thank you for your reply. I use an external 500 gb SSD using a short USB lead from the back of my iMac, but if that is the problem then why now because nothing has changed. In an attempt to put things right I have changed the port the USB lead is plugged into. By the way what is an NAS??? Sorry about that but I do not know the term NAS, I think it will be obvious once it is explained! My idea here "Nothing About Something".

Best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Are you getting the backup failure messages while the Mac is active? If the external drive is powered purely by the USB port, it should technically be available at all times.

I'd keep an eye on repeated failures and try to deal with it if that becomes a situation.

NAS = Network Area Storage. This is a box that usually has multiple drives in a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) to provide the ability to protect your data locally. Should one drive fail, you just replace it with another and your overall data integrity is maintained. This box is usually sitting on the network and has multiple services.

My NAS serves as my media storage as well for all of my videos/music that I've collected over the years. It's also my data dump for files that I don't need all the time.

Recent NAS' also have additional features built into them for media streaming to supported devices, private cloud creation and so on.

 

[IWT]

Hi Keith

You can turn off TM by going into System Preferences > Time Machine and Un-ticking "Back up Automatically".

Thereafter, it will not back up until you click on the tiny TM icon on the Top Menu Bar - looks like:

When you click on it, you get a drop down menu. Choose "Back Up Now".

However; I'm concerned by:

I keep getting nag boards telling me TM has failed on it's hourly

As you have an iMac and the TM is permanently attached, this warning suggests to me that the External Hard Drive (EHD) has become corrupted or otherwise compromised.

I suggest you turn off the automatic backups as shown above. Then try the manual approach. If that works, then carry on with the manual approach as you're not that bothered about regular backups - BUT, if it fails, then I think you probably need to erase the EHD, reformat it and start afresh.

Please tell us whether the manual method worked or not. We can easily guide you regards erase/reformat if needed.

Ian

 

[sllewk]

Hi Ian, Nice to see you again. My external SSD is being used by TimeMachine as we speak and has been doing so for the past 45 minutes or so; or at least the blue indicator light is still flashing as an indication. I have unplugged the USB cable and plugged it into a different port. Maybe it will solve the problem but not too sure on that score. I feel that your idea regarding reformatting etc might be a better idea but I will wait a few days to find out if the re-routing via a different port will make things better.

Very best regards from Keith in Derby.

 

[toMACsh]

You can adjust the frequency of TM backups using 3rd party software. I have Backup Scheduler, and set my backups to occur when I'm not likely to be using the computer. The backup slows things down, so I found it to be frustrating.

 

[ferrarr]

You can run Disk Utility > First Aid on the external SSD. See this article,

How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility - Apple Support

Use the First Aid feature of Disk Utility to find and repair disk errors.

support.apple.com

 

[MacInWin]

Another Time Machine third party software is Time Machine Editor. Dead simple to schedule backups whenever you want. I do two daily, noon and midnight. I'm thinking of dropping the noon backup as I don't have a lot of stuff to worry about other than my photos, and they are backed up on four different drives (Yes, I have lost a lot of pictures before when my main drive AND the backup drive both failed at the same time, so I am paranoid about it.)

 

[sllewk]

Good morning, Almost 23 hours on and it appears that all is well with not only TM but SD as well, a simple thing like re-routing the feed point seems to have worked wonders. In the not too distant future I will look at re-scheduling TM to a more acceptable time scale for my situation. Thank you very much indeed to all who replied to my problem.

Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[sllewk]

Hello Jake, Hope all is well with you and yours? I have downloaded TimeMachineEditor and it is doing it's job as scheduled by myself. Job sorted! Thank you very much indeed.

Very best regards from Keith in Derby England,

 

[horsham hector]

What exactly does Time Machine back up? I can never get it to work (2020 Imac 27inch). I keep my files i.e. photo library, pictures, documents etc. on external drives. If I connect an external hard drive to use with Time Machine it wants to wipe it first. Assuming I do that, will Time Machine only back up files as I go along i.e save only those files I've created or altered? I also save my files to Dropbox. Does that mean I don't need Time Machine?

 

[MacInWin]

What exactly does Time Machine back up? I can never get it to work (2020 Imac 27inch). I keep my files i.e. photo library, pictures, documents etc. on external drives. If I connect an external hard drive to use with Time Machine it wants to wipe it first. Assuming I do that, will Time Machine only back up files as I go along i.e save only those files I've created or altered? I also save my files to Dropbox. Does that mean I don't need Time Machine?

TM backs up everything on the source drive, unless the user excludes some of it. And yes, when you assign a new drive as the backup drive, TM wants to format it for TM use. Once a drive is assigned, TM will backup everything the first time it is run and at each subsequent run will backup only what is changed, but keep the older files, changed and unchanged, in case of a disaster.

Do you need TM? That's up to you to decide. Personally, I have a TM backup for the historical aspects so that if a document gets changed and I want to know what it was before the change, I can go back in history and find it (thus the name TIME MACHINE--you can go back in time). I also have a cloned backup using Carbon Copy Cloner that is there both as a second backup and for the occasion where the internal drive fails and I want to run my computer while I wait for the replacement drive to arrive. TM won't do that. TM can be booted, but only to instal the OS on a drive and to restore the files from it to that new drive.

Dropbox is not, IMHO, a true backup. It's just a storage place. I suppose it could serve as a backup, if all I want to preserve are the files I store there and that everything else on my internal drive can be thrown away.

I have had internal drives fail before, and I even had a simultaneous failure of the internal and my backup drive, cost me 1000's of pictures forever gone. So I am paranoid now, with a TM backup to a RAID array and a CCC clone to another drive, plus I store my pictures on two other drives in my network. Basically. at least four copies of the pictures. Overkill? Yep, until I need that fourth copy.

 

[horsham hector]

Thank you MacInWin, appreciated. I agree with your backup strategy. Could I please ask, does Time machine only back up what's being saved on my Mac internal SSD drive? I only keep applications on there, using external drives for my photos, documents etc. Can you get Time machine to back up an external hard drive to another external hard drive instead?

 

[ferrarr]

Can you get Time machine to back up an external hard drive to another external hard drive instead?

Yes you can.

In Time Machine Preferences, just remove the drives from the "exclude" list.

 

[IWT]

Bob is absolutely right.

Just bear in mind that the first Backup of the External will take a long time. Thereafter, both Drives (Int and Ext) will BU by increment. That will be quicker, but obviously slower than backing up just the Internal.

Ian

 

[sllewk]

Hi there, TM is now operating as it should onto an external 500gb SSD. All appears well so I will now leave well alone or I might mess it up again!!!
Thanks to all who replied to my problem.

Regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[MacInWin]

Thank you MacInWin, appreciated. I agree with your backup strategy. Could I please ask, does Time machine only back up what's being saved on my Mac internal SSD drive? I only keep applications on there, using external drives for my photos, documents etc. Can you get Time machine to back up an external hard drive to another external hard drive instead?

TM backs up everything on the drive. After the first backup, it only copies over what has changed, but it is EVERYTHING that has changed, so system files, logs, user data, plists, etc. About the only things not backed up are the items in the Trash.