Is there a problem between Monterey and Ventura?

[ferrarr]

We usually recommend just using the default settings on the Maintenance tab. So if you didn't change anything, you should be good to go.

 

[rbpeirce]

We usually recommend just using the default settings on the Maintenance tab. So if you didn't change anything, you should be good to go.

Thanks. I'll give it a shot and report back.

 

[MacInWin]

I probably don't have the terminology straight.

You don't, and that makes it hard for us to diagnose because technical terms have specific meanings.

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.

Hard to tell. As I said, tech terms are very specific. IF you want us to comment on that bit, open Disk Utility, click on "View" and select "Show All Devices," then take a screenshot and post it. It should look something like this:



That is my system. I have a 1TB "drive" on my M1 MBP, which has one Container and then two volumes. One is named Macintosh HD and the other is Macintosh HD - Data. The Macintosh HD is greyed out because it is both read-only and encrypted for security, while Macintosh HD - Data is where my account folder and file are located. The Container has the full 1TB, the two Volumes can expand/contract as needed as as long as they fit in the Container.

 

[rbpeirce]

Thanks. I'll give it a shot and report back.

Didn't help. The last good backup is still 2/9.

 

[rbpeirce]

You don't, and that makes it hard for us to diagnose because technical terms have specific meanings.

Hard to tell. As I said, tech terms are very specific. IF you want us to comment on that bit, open Disk Utility, click on "View" and select "Show All Devices," then take a screenshot and post it. It should look something like this:

View attachment 37955

That is my system. I have a 1TB "drive" on my M1 MBP, which has one Container and then two volumes. One is named Macintosh HD and the other is Macintosh HD - Data. The Macintosh HD is greyed out because it is both read-only and encrypted for security, while Macintosh HD - Data is where my account folder and file are located. The Container has the full 1TB, the two Volumes can expand/contract as needed as as long as they fit in the Container.

My seagate Portable Media, which I call TM, has two partitions, one for Time Machine and the other for other stuff. So, I guess a container is what I call a partition. My wife's MBP is trying to backup to a sparsebundle on the Data [on TM] volume. Her computer is able to find it, open it and start to write to it and then it stops with no error message.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

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.

Yep. Maintenance tab. Leave it on defaults and run. Hopefully that does the trick. I am still having lingering issues with my Time Capsule, but I’m pretty sure Ventura is at fault. Right now, my backups are making it to the device but I can’t browse anything other than local snapshots, which only span a couple days. Running Onyx again will likely fix it temporarily, which I’ll try tonight, but methinks Ventura is still buggy in this regard.

 

[IWT]

My seagate Portable Media, which I call TM, has two partitions, one for Time Machine and the other for other stuff.

Maybe it's been said before; but therein lies a problem.

A quote from Apple:

"Connect a storage device to use for backups
Connect an external storage device to your Mac, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive. Or learn about other backup disks that you can use with Time Machine.

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

Also NB: Ideally, your backup disk should have at least twice the storage capacity of every disk or volume you're backing up.

Use Time Machine to back up - Apple Support

Automatically back up what's important: Photos, email, music, and more.

support.apple.com

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

You MIGHT be able to use a Container as a backup and share the drive with the OTHER Container, but in the Container her machine is using there are two Volumes, Data (TM) and Track Data (TM). That is probably contributing to the issue, as Ian and I have both pointed out. TM takes control of the "drive" (Container) to which it is pointed and does not share well. So, having two Volumes in that Container could well be the issue here. And you can stop saying that her machine is backing up to a sparsebundle because it isn't. It's backing up to a Volume, using a sparsebundle format for data storage. TM uses that format to save space during transmission of the data over the network. I have found sparsebundle backups to be more fragile than backups done by direct attachment drives, so I don't use TM on a network storage any more. You might consider getting a dedicated drive for her Mac and direct attach it. Doesn't need to be either fast or terribly large. A rotating drive that is about twice the size of the amount of data on her system will do nicely.

 

[rbpeirce]

Maybe it's been said before; but therein lies a problem.

A quote from Apple:

"Connect a storage device to use for backups
Connect an external storage device to your Mac, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive. Or learn about other backup disks that you can use with Time Machine.

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

Also NB: Ideally, your backup disk should have at least twice the storage capacity of every disk or volume you're backing up.

Use Time Machine to back up - Apple Support

Automatically back up what's important: Photos, email, music, and more.

support.apple.com

Ian

It's been said before. I've done this since I started using Time Machine and I've never had a problem. Also, what is the definition of a device? Is it a 5Tb drive or a 1Tb partition. The partition is what gets mounted. Back with Mojave, when Time Machine had a directory, you actually could safely put other stuff on the drive or partition. That isn't the issue here. This has been working fine until I upgraded to Ventura, but I'm not even sure that is the problem.

I just attempted a Time Machine backup and sat and watched it. It took about an hour before stopping without completing. Here's what happened:

At somewhere around 50-60% complete it claimed to have copied 1.93Gb.
It then stopped copying but kept running. Interestingly, the further it got the longer it said it was going to run. It started with an estimated time to completion of about 27 min. Then . . .
63.9% 33 min.
64.0% 34 min.
64.2% 35 min.
And so on until 65.1% when it reached 40 min. Then it suddenly jumped to 75.9% and 23 min., 80.5% and 17min. and so on. At 80.5% it starts to copy again reaching 2.23Gb at 93.7%. Then it switched to Clean Up and I thought I was home free. Unfortunately, it stopped and the latest backup never recorded!

While this was running I took the opportunity to delete a couple old backups. When everything was finished I mounted the sparsebundle. The last backup still said 2/9 but the backups I deleted were gone.

I have absolutely no idea why this isn't working. BTW, the backups from my machine to partitions on attached drives continue to work with no problems.

 

[ferrarr]

Note, when setting up Time Machine backup drives, there is the option to set the amount of space TM is allowed to use on the selected drive/disk/partition.

 

[rbpeirce]

Note, when setting up Time Machine backup drives, there is the option to set the amount of space TM is allowed to use on the selected drive/disk/partition.

I'm not sure how that works with the new setup. As near as I can tell TM is the only thing that can exist in the partition, so if you have a 2Tb partition why limit TM to 1Tb. It is easier to use a 1Tb partition and use the other 1Tb for something else.

That might have worked better when TM was just a directory on a drive.

 

[rbpeirce]

I don't know why it stopped working and now I don't know why it started to work again. My wife's MBP backed up yesterday and then again today! OTOH, the 2/9/23 backup disappeared!! Maybe somehow that was the problem.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I don't know why it stopped working and now I don't know why it started to work again. My wife's MBP backed up yesterday and then again today! OTOH, the 2/9/23 backup disappeared!! Maybe somehow that was the problem.

So the 02/09/2023 backup likely didn't actually disappear. So here's how this works. When macOS does a Time Machine backup, it creates a snapshot that is stored temporarily on the Mac itself. Some time after the backup is successfully moved to the Time Capsule, the local snapshot gets deleted. Until it gets deleted, you can browse those snapshots using the Time Machine browser as if they were on the remote Time Capsule. Now... I do strictly daily backups here, and in my experience I see 2-3 days of snapshots still on my Mac even after they have been successfully copied to the Time Capsule.

So... let's say the Time Capsule is disconnected or isn't responding for whatever reason. When you go into the Time Machine browser, you see the still-present local snapshots but not the older backups.

So here's what I think is happening based on my experience with Ventura's apparent buggy behavior with Time Machine. The backups you are seeing are the local snapshots that are still present. You can't see the backup from 02/09 because Ventura is having trouble connecting to the actual Time Capsule, where it would be. Once it does, which appears to be somewhat random, you'll see it. This is what I experience, and actually still am on occasion even though I know my backups are in fact making it over.

So how do I know the state of my own backups? I have a 3rd party utility called TinkerTool System that has a module for managing Time Machine backups. It will tell me exactly what is present on my Mac as snapshots, and what backups are on my Time Capsule. This is why I believe the problem must be Ventura. Even when Ventura is acting up and can't show me the backups that are on the Time Capsule, TTS can see they exist.

 

[rbpeirce]

I think I've solved this. I think the sparsebundle backup file was corrupt in some way. I deleted it and started over and it seems to be working ok now. I saved a working copy of the old sparsebundle just in case.