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Re: Another TM problem - what now?

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On 05/08/2020 20:54, Andy Hewitt wrote:
> jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Doing a TM backup tonight (MBAir/10.15.6) to a external HD that I have
>> used several times this year and got some strange behaviour.  About 2/3
>> through it - for no apparent reason it all went pear shaped. The main
>> issue was an error message about not being able to "load System
>> Preferences".  I couldn't do anything.  Sys Prefs wouldn't force quit
>> and "shut down" did nothing".  I had to bomb out and restart.
>>
>> When all was back up, I looked in the TM disk and saw the backup was
>> there as "in  progress".  I thought the best option was to delete that
>> and start again.  So tried that but the waste basket has been deleting
>> for >1 hour.
>>
>> Is this normal ?  Any suggestions?  I would like to get to bed tonight :-)
>>
>> Cheers  JohnB
> 
> <bemused> So you’ve started a backup to a suspected iffy drive, wondered
> why stuff is crashing, deleted the ‘in progress’ backup process, and wonder
> why that’s taking so long? Seriously?
> 
> My tips
>   • Start with a known good drive to backup to. Make sure it’s formatted
> HFS+ (Journaled).
>   • Make sure the cables enclosures, and any hubs are known to be good (any
> of those could cause random read/write errors).
>   • Is the source data good - if your source is corrupt, then you’ll backup
> corrupt data.
>   • If you suspect the source drive is iffy, get your data off that as
> quickly as possible (Disk Utility ‘Restore’ is a reliable and free way to
> do that, or SuperDuper, or Carbon Copy Cloner if you prefer), and onto a
> known good drive. You may copy some corrupt data, but you can deal with
> that better if it’s on a good drive, and not continuing to add to the
> problem.
> • If you get past that point, then start your Time Machine backup, on the
> first run it can take a long time to complete, many hours (it used to run
> into days on older machines). So be patient. If it shows ‘In Progress’,
> then it probably is, when you tried to delete it, it might have been many
> GB of data still being updated, so would have been cleaning up before
> deletion, and could have taken hours again. By trying to delete it, you
> were probably just screwing it up completely - if you want to clear a drive
> completely (and you should for Time Machine) it’s quicker and less wear and
> tear to reformat.
>   
> You maybe also should consider additional backups too, cloud storage, other
> drives using different software (aforementioned SD or CCC). IME TM is quite
> hard on drives, so be prepared to replace it at intervals (I dunno, about
> every three years for me here).
> 
> Just my thoughts anyway.
> 
Cheers Andy,

Maybe the wording was poor.  I have used this external drive a few times 
over the last year (its a WD and ~2 yr old - and rarely switched on) and 
its worked perfectly - its "not" suspected as being iffy at all.

I am covered re. backups. All my files are copied to a pendrive every 
week or so (I dont need hourly/daily backups) I also have an old Macbook 
Pro that I use as a "clone" with everything copied to it and for other 
stuff (e.g. burning CD's).

So I am not really bothered by this but I have grown to really dislike 
TM over the last few years (slower than a slow thing) and think I am 
going to move to CCC - its just the £30 that puts me off :-)

Meanwhile it still deletes...  May bomb out and reformat the disk and do 
a TM or CCC from scratch tomorrow.

JohnB

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Thread

Another TM problem - what now? jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> - 2020-08-05 20:31 +0100
  Re: Another TM problem - what now? Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-08-05 19:54 +0000
    Re: Another TM problem - what now? jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> - 2020-08-05 21:09 +0100
  Re: Another TM problem - what now? jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> - 2020-08-05 23:40 +0100
    Re: Another TM problem - what now? jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> - 2020-08-06 02:07 +0100
      Re: Another TM problem - what now? David_B <DavidB@nomail.afraid.org> - 2020-08-06 07:33 +0100
      Re: Another TM problem - what now? Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-08-06 10:03 +0000
        Re: Another TM problem - what now? jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> - 2020-08-06 11:44 +0100
          Re: Another TM problem - what now? Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-08-06 11:54 +0000
            Re: Another TM problem - what now? jbrennand <brennand@ntlworld.com> - 2020-08-06 13:28 +0100
  Re: Another TM problem - what now? Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-08-06 10:02 +0000

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