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

[David&karen]

Hi everyone. I have a weird one here. Our iMac 5k has a 1tb ssd in it and an 8tb OWC Thunderbay 4 in Raid 5(our photos are in the Raid array with Softraid controlling it) that we backup to time machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. The CCC backups(2 of them) are just fine as is one of the two Time machine backups(the good one goes back to March when we bought the iMac). The second Time machine backup is a mystery: it will be fine for a few days, then when it is supposed to do an incremental back up it shows the preparing... for like 10min then backups the entire ssd and the Thunderbay drives, an entire 2.07tb! This happens like every few days, and it is a real pita. The other Time machine backup acts normal, and they are configured exactly the same, are the same brand 5tb drives, etc. The 2 CCC drives are excluded from the backup for the Time machine backups, and the Time machine backups are excluded from the CCC backups. All we want is the second Time machine backup to work like the first one, any ideas??

David

 

[harryb2448]

One of the reason I use cloning software and not Time Machine.

I like to control my backups, which is done weekly on a Friday and Smart Backup on SuperDuper takes left than five minutes and has the great asset of being bootable when, not if, the flash drive fails.

 

[IWT]

@David&Karen

Let me see if I'm reading your post correctly.

Time Machine backs up your 8TB Thunderbay? But you don't want that? You just want Time Machine to back up your 1TB SSD?

If that's right:

Go into System Preferences > Time Machine > Options. This will open a Window which shows what is EXCLUDED from the Time Machine back up. Drag in those Drives (from the Desktop or Finder) that you don't want to back up.

Then Time Machine will only back up your 1TB SSD.

Have I understood your problem correctly?

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

I'm sorry, but your post is very confusing to me. Where are these backups going? You said you were backing up your internal SSD and the Raid array, but you didn't say where those backups were going. Are you backing up to the Raid array? Or to another set of drives you didn't mention? How are the backup drives attached to the iMac? Are all these backups going to one drive, or multiple? Your statement, "...we backup to time machine and Carbon Copy Cloner" may be what throws me off. TM and CCC aren't locations, they are applications that backup FROM something TO something else. So, where and what is that something else?

 

[David&karen]

Sorry for the confusion. The 2 CCC drives are 5tb external drives on usb3. The 2 Time machine drives are also 5tb also on usb3. The CCC backups all are perfect. One time machine backup backed up the SSD and the raid array perfectly and has done the incremental backups since March perfectly. The 2nd time machine backup has done it's first backup of the SSD and raid array in March, will do incremental backups for a few days, then will say preparing... for around 10 minutes and then decide to copy the entire SSD and raid array again, around 2.07tb. Its like it forgets to do the incremental backups. Has been like this since March. Both Time machine backups are configured the same, but sure don't act like it.

David

 

[David&karen]

No ideas? Anyone?

 

[MacInWin]

Both Time machine backups are configured the same, but sure don't act like it.

Can you elaborate on that statement? There isn't a lot to configure on a TM backup, and if you have two drives being used for the backup, TM should just switch from one to the other without any issues. Basically, as I understand it, when you designate a second drive for TM, it asks if you want to alternate the two drives and if you say yes, it does so. So backup on one day goes to drive A and the next one goes to drive B.

Or are you saying that you have multiple accounts and use one account for one backup and a different account for the other?

Maybe it would be best if you described how you are backing up using TM in detail.

 

[IWT]

I'm sorry you've had to poke us about ideas, but as Jake says (more or less); either we are not grasping the intricacies of your backup strategy in relation to Time Machine or there's a "flaw" in the misbehaving Time Machine.

I run two Time Machines. In fact they alternate their BUs on an hourly basis rather than daily. So first hour is TM1, second hour TM2, third hour back to TM1.

If one of yours is working fine, the other not, I'd do the following:

Use Disk Utility (DU) and run First Aid on the bad TM to make sure the drive is okay.

Then I'd reformat that drive (Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) and let it do a complete BU from scratch. Thereafter, it should adopt the proper incremental BU regime.

The reason for this is that any BU has to be trustworthy and if one of your Time Machines is misbehaving, I'd start over again. As Jake said, there's normally not much that can go wrong with Time Machine.

Ian

 

[David&karen]

Hi all. Both are configured to do alternate backups, but the one keeps acting as above. I have reconfigured it at least three times as IWT suggested and it reverts to what I have stated. I ran disk utility on it and it seems fine. They are both on the main(admin) account. I can't figure it out.

David

 

[ferrarr]

I am not familiar with using two drives for Time Machine. Does it list both drives when you open System Preferences > Time Machine? When I open TM it only lists the one drive I am using. Also how much space is being used by TM on each backup disk? Were the two drives started at the same time? And finally, how do you know TM is backing up over 2 TB each time? Are you checking the drive before and after the backups? That drive must be full by now...

 

[MacInWin]

Hi all. Both are configured to do alternate backups, but the one keeps acting as above. I have reconfigured it at least three times as IWT suggested and it reverts to what I have stated. I ran disk utility on it and it seems fine. They are both on the main(admin) account. I can't figure it out.

David

Sorry, but again, I'm confused. What do you mean by "Both..."? There is only ONE TM on the system and ONE configuration. I just went through the configuration to add a second drive and got this prompt:


What I did was open System Preferences/Time Machine/Select Disk and then "Mavericks." TM then prompted me to pick what I wanted to do, either REPLACE my current backup at "WD 3T" or ADD "Mavericks" to the backup, in which case it would alternate between the two drives. That's how TM works. And that is why your description of TWO backups makes no sense to me.

So, once again, can you help me understand what you mean by "Both?" How did you create these two backups? Are you using some third party tool or are you going, as I did, through System Preferences to set up TM?

 

[David&karen]

The TM is configured as below to make 2 backups and alternate between them as in the screenshot below:

The first one started in march works as usual, the 2nd one will say "preparing..." for 10 min or so every few days to a week, then copy the entire content of the Raid array and the SSD in the Mac(which is what is specified to copy)which is about 2.07TB now, then it repeats the process as described above.

The last time it did this was august 22nd, so what is going on here? They are configured exactly the same.

 

[David&karen]

The TM is also specified to NOT copy either TM backup.

 

[ferrarr]

The last time it did this was august 22nd, so what is going on here? They are configured exactly the same.

It looks like in your image TM 2 has backups from Aug 22 through Aug 29, is that when you stopped it?

It also looks like there is still 2.19gb left on the backup, so if it was doing 2+gb for every backup up, it would have been full in 3 days maybe?


P.S. What else is Time Machine not backing up?

 

[David&karen]

I have not allowed it to complete the latest backup as it takes 8hrs Plus to do. That is why I posted here as this is frustrating. The excluded disks are the 2 5tb disks that are carbon copy clones(they work perfectly btw), and the 2 disks that are TM backups. The 2 5tb TM disks are set to only copy the raid array and the iMacs 1tb SSD.

David

 

[ferrarr]

When you click on Option, in your image in post #12, what does it say for "Estimated size for full backup:"?

And, since I don't know this, does TM create another "first time" backup when a new backup drive is added?

The way I look at it, either disk should be able to get you back (or close enough) the where you were when a drive failed. So, either TM backup disks need to have most of the same "older" information, to get your data back. If the first backup drive died, you loose whatever is not backed up on the second drive. But again, I don't know that.

 

[David&karen]

TM will create a complete backup the first time you add a new disk to be a TM backup drive. Then its supposed to do incremental backups. I really wanted 2 TM drives in case of a drive failure.

David

 

[David&karen]

The last time it said estimated size 2.07tb.

 

[MacInWin]

OK, I think I have it now about what you are trying to do. From your description, it appears that the second drive is having issues. It may pass drive tests, but TM is seeing it as a faulty drive for some reason. The "preparing" message appears while TM is comparing the most recent backup to the current state of the sources you want backed up and if for any reason the backup drive is not responding as TM expects, it defaults to making a new backup. Are the two drives the same brand, same model, same interface? I see that on the successful backup you have only 600GB or so left of 5TB, so it has a lot of data there. The other drive, as expected, has more free space because it created a new backup on August 22. If it is now insisting on making a new backup and starting over again, I'd say the drive was failing. As I said, it may pass a drive test but in the real world application something is going wrong with the drive.

 

[David&karen]

Ahh, that makes sense. It is the same exact drive and the same interface. Let me delve into that drive to see if I can root out it's issues. And thank you.

David