Is there a problem between Monterey and Ventura?

[rbpeirce]

My wife's Monterey MBP does Time Machine backups to a drive attached to my MBP. Mine was on Monterey until a couple of days ago when I updated to Ventura. Since then her backups start and seem to run but never complete. The last completed backup was 2/9 @ 1PM. Any ideas?

 

[ferrarr]

Have you restarted either MBP?

 

[rbpeirce]

Yes

 

[MacInWin]

I don't think Ventura shares TM drives. According to Apple:

• Use this storage device only as your Time Machine backup disk, not for storage of other files.

from here: Back up your Mac with Time Machine

 

[rbpeirce]

Different issue I think. They're talking about putting other stuff on your backup drive. I'm backing up to a sparsebundle and that's worked fine up to now.

I manually started a Time Machine backup on my wife's machine. It found the drive, prepared the backup and started to copy. It got to about 50Mb and just said stopping with no explanation. It would have been nice to get some sort of error message! I have no idea why it decided to stop at that point.

 

[MacInWin]

I'm backing up to a sparsebundle and that's worked fine up to now.

What does that mean? TM makes the decision on what format to use, based on the destination. About the only control you have is if the drive is a network server.

Get TheTimeMachineMechanic from here: An easier way to check Time Machine: T2M2
and see if there are any errors being reported. Note that the new Unified log probably only goes back about 24 hours, so you may need to try a backup, then use T2M2 to look at the log as soon as it stops.

 

[rbpeirce]

What does that mean? TM makes the decision on what format to use, based on the destination. About the only control you have is if the drive is a network server.

Since my wife doesn't have any drives attached to her machine I select a drive on my machine that is accessible over the network. For whatever reason, Apple creates a Time Machine sparsebudle and backs up into that.

I tried t2m2 and it said no backup has been completed successfully in the last four hours and there were no error messages found, which is what I knew before.

 

[MacInWin]

Ok, then I guess you have no problems. You said:

I manually started a Time Machine backup on my wife's machine. It found the drive, prepared the backup and started to copy. It got to about 50Mb and just said stopping with no explanation. It would have been nice to get some sort of error message! I have no idea why it decided to stop at that point.

If there are no error messages in the log, and if TM finished, the backup sounds like it was successful.

You need to run T2M2 on HER machine to see what that log says. Her backup information won't be in your log.

 

[ferrarr]

If you are using Time Machine on your Mac, using that external drive, without a separate partition for her TM backup, then your Time Machine controls that entire external drive.

 

[rbpeirce]

Ok, then I guess you have no problems. You said:


If there are no error messages in the log, and if TM finished, the backup sounds like it was successful.

You need to run T2M2 on HER machine to see what that log says. Her backup information won't be in your log.

I did run it from here machine. It said the backup didn't comlet4e but no indication why.

 

[rbpeirce]

If you are using Time Machine on your Mac, using that external drive, without a separate partition for her TM backup, then your Time Machine controls that entire external drive.

My Time Machine backups are on there own drives.

 

[Slydude]

Since my wife doesn't have any drives attached to her machine I select a drive on my machine that is accessible over the network. For whatever reason, Apple creates a Time Machine sparsebudle and backs up into that.

The sparsebundle format has been used by Apple for several years any time a backup occurs over the network. Since the drive in question is actually attached to your machine the backup is occurring over a network: Hence the spars bundle.

 

[rbpeirce]

The sparsebundle format has been used by Apple for several years any time a backup occurs over the network. Since the drive in question is actually attached to your machine the backup is occurring over a network: Hence the spars bundle.

I know that. I just don't know why.

 

[Slydude]

In the past, backup programs have often used some form of disk image (generic or proprietary) to store a backup of the source disk. As you probably know, a disk image strives to create an exact copy of the source disk.

The problem with most disk images is that, once they are created, the size of the file isn't easily changed without recreating the image file from scratch. Suppose for a moment a disk image is created with enough room for 10 MB of data. Everything's fine until I need to backup more than 10 MB of data. Making room for more data usually means creating a new image file. If I need less that 10 MB that space is wasted.

The advantage of sparsbundle files is that you have the best of both worlds. They are essentially dynamic image files. The image expands and contracts as needed depending upon the space needed to house the backup.

Sparse bundles: what they are and how to work around their bugs

An efficient means of storage with many uses, but riddled with bugs and shortcomings. Explains how to compact and resize them, and more.

eclecticlight.co

 

[rbpeirce]

In the past, backup programs have often used some form of disk image (generic or proprietary) to store a backup of the source disk. As you probably know, a disk image strives to create an exact copy of the source disk.

The problem with most disk images is that, once they are created, the size of the file isn't easily changed without recreating the image file from scratch. Suppose for a moment a disk image is created with enough room for 10 MB of data. Everything's fine until I need to backup more than 10 MB of data. Making room for more data usually means creating a new image file. If I need less that 10 MB that space is wasted.

The advantage of sparsbundle files is that you have the best of both worlds. They are essentially dynamic image files. The image expands and contracts as needed depending upon the space needed to house the backup.

Sparse bundles: what they are and how to work around their bugs

An efficient means of storage with many uses, but riddled with bugs and shortcomings. Explains how to compact and resize them, and more.

eclecticlight.co

That's no longer true with containers. I can set up several container partitions on an APFS formatted drive or hard partition and they will expand as needed. I don't know if they contract or not and I'm not sure it even matters, because, in addition to two Time Machine backups, I use SD! to backup my HD to a container on an external drive. Get Info says it is the size of what's on my HD but that it has all the free space on the drive available.

I use sparsebundles when I have to but I don't like them. They seem more prone to corruption than partitions or containers within a partition. Of course, that could just be my experience.

 

[MacInWin]

My Time Machine backups are on there own drives.

My wife's Monterey MBP does Time Machine backups to a drive attached to my MBP.

So, you have two different drives on your system, one for your backups and one for hers. Note, not Containers, not Volumes, but drives, right? Then the problem may be in the way her system connects to the shared drive, and the security for that drive on your system. Ventura has much stronger security. Check in Settings to see if the Sharing settings allow File Sharing, or Drive sharing on your system.

Containers do NOT change size, ever. Volumes that are created inside Containers do change size and share the total space within the Container. And you don't actually send anything to a Container, just to a Volume within a Container. Think of Containers as the analogue of what used to be Partitions, but much more sophisticated. Once you set the size of a Container, it is fixed unless you take a definitive action within Disk Utility to change it. And, I think, that if you make a serious change to a Container, the Volumes inside are lost. Not sure of that last, but I seem to recall seeing that somewhere. Read more here: Inside APFS: from containers to clones

 

[Lifeisabeach]

My wife's Monterey MBP does Time Machine backups to a drive attached to my MBP. Mine was on Monterey until a couple of days ago when I updated to Ventura. Since then her backups start and seem to run but never complete. The last completed backup was 2/9 @ 1PM. Any ideas?

I had issues with backups not completing after I upgraded my iMac to Ventura. It was driving me crazy. The fix, which was wholly unexpected? Cache cleanup using Onyx. I ran it to troubleshoot a different problem and wound up curing both!

Another win thanks to Onyx!

Time and time again, Onyx has proven to be an essential tool. So I've been having nagging issues with Ventura on my 2019 iMac ever since I upgraded to it from Monterey. I waited until 13.1 was released, then jumped straight to that. Ever since, I've had error messages after coming up from...

www.mac-forums.com

 

[Slydude]

@MacInWin Thanks for describing that distinction about containers. I thought that was how things were handled but was going to have to do some research to be sure. The fact that containers don't actually shrink might explain why Apple has chosen to keep sparsebundles as their format for network backups.

 

[rbpeirce]

So, you have two different drives on your system, one for your backups and one for hers. Note, not Containers, not Volumes, but drives, right? Then the problem may be in the way her system connects to the shared drive, and the security for that drive on your system. Ventura has much stronger security. Check in Settings to see if the Sharing settings allow File Sharing, or Drive sharing on your system.

I have two drives for Time Machine on my computer and another drive for her Time Machine backups.

File and Media sharing are on. There is no Drive sharing but I presume that is included in Media.

Containers do NOT change size, ever. Volumes that are created inside Containers do change size and share the total space within the Container. And you don't actually send anything to a Container, just to a Volume within a Container. Think of Containers as the analogue of what used to be Partitions, but much more sophisticated. Once you set the size of a Container, it is fixed unless you take a definitive action within Disk Utility to change it. And, I think, that if you make a serious change to a Container, the Volumes inside are lost. Not sure of that last, but I seem to recall seeing that somewhere. Read more here: Inside APFS: from containers to clones

I probably don't have the terminology straight. I have a drive that is "soft" partitioned. By that I mean there are things that appear as "Locations" and can be mounted and dismounted, but aren't actually partitions. They have a size based on what is in them but they can expand to the total capacity of the drive. If I read you right these are Volumes and the drive itself is the Container.

 

[rbpeirce]

I had issues with backups not completing after I upgraded my iMac to Ventura. It was driving me crazy. The fix, which was wholly unexpected? Cache cleanup using Onyx. I ran it to troubleshoot a different problem and wound up curing both!

Another win thanks to Onyx!

Time and time again, Onyx has proven to be an essential tool. So I've been having nagging issues with Ventura on my 2019 iMac ever since I upgraded to it from Monterey. I waited until 13.1 was released, then jumped straight to that. Ever since, I've had error messages after coming up from...

www.mac-forums.com

Thanks. I downloaded the app but I can't figure out what cleans up the cache! Would it be Maintenance-Cleaning? Info says that does something to caches.