Apple pushes out Mac OS X update to fix Time Machine fail

Apple has released a supplemental update to Mac OS X Lion that fixes a problem with the Time Machine back-up system. Some Lion users are currently experiencing errors while attempting to restore from a Time Machine backup, or even attempting to back up on the feature – as described on this Mac help forum here – so the fix is …

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon Copy Cloner

I haven't been happy with Time Machine since day one.

CCC on the other hand is flawless.

[Mondo the Magnificent]

Sit back and wait...

has been my approach to OSX10.7. My 10.6.8 Snow Leopard systems still work very well.

My son upgraded to 10.7 upon its release and I decided to sit back and watch..

I was a little sceptic about just how many changes there were in 10.7 and no sooner Apple and users come to grips with [the few issues Lion], it's being superseded by Mountain Lion!

I agree with CCC and I have had great success with SuperDuper! as another great alternative for backup.

[Mark 65]

Re: Sit back and wait...

I only updated the hardly used travel laptop with it due to WDE in FileVault. Otherwise not much point.

[Greg J Preece]

Wireless patches? Finally! The wireless on my MBP drops its connection every ten minutes in Mac OS X, but works flawlessly in Linux and Windows. It's infuriating, especially if you're downloading stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

One Word...

Oh My God!

[Wibble]

Seems OK to me

I've done several recoveries using Time Machine and Lion without any problems. So it must be a specific set of circumstances that triggers the problem.

[Stephen 2]

Re: Seems OK to me

Same here.

Comparing time machine backup to HD cloners and such like seems a bit of an oranges and apples scenario. I have a time capsule so my laptop backs up wirelessly every so often. No need for me to do anything at all and I can grab a copy of an old file at various stages of its life. Throughout my Windows/Linux/OS X life, I've never come across a better/easier backup system than Time Machine.

If my harddrive was to go tits up right now, I could swap it out for another and restore from an automated backup which is less than an hour old. A backup that I had absolutely no interference with, I didn't have to remember to do it or fiddle with anything, it was just done magically in the background :)

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be far fucking better

If the Time Capsules didn't shit themselves and die about every 12 months as 3 of ours now have. Luckilly Apple has seen fit to replace them F.O.C. each time, but it's a right pain in the arse to backup 700GB over 54mbps wifi anyway you look at it.

So they fixed the easy bug, but still haven't fixed the GLARING MASSIVE SUCKING bug I reported more than 16 months ago -- Spotlight is indexing the backup drives even though the OS is already indexed. Sucks the life out of your machine when backups commence with this huge failure of logic.

If you're listening Apple, you can find the bug in Radar quite easily....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It would be far fucking better

I assume you have an older time capsule if you're operating at 54mbps? And you know that you can backup over ethernet cable too? For the first backup why not just backup other ethernet and then regular wireless hassle free backups in the future. SInce all future backups will be much much much smaller.

[BigG]

Re: It would be far fucking better

You're holding it wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It would be far fucking better

Why dont you just put a spotlight privacy exclusion on the time machine drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It would be far fucking better

Because it fucking ignores it and indexes it anyway. If you're able to read you would have seen I have filed a bug with Apple.

Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It would be far fucking better

why you swearin? im not swearin

[Mark 65]

Re: It would be far fucking better

Whilst they're at it, how about them fixing the flaw whereby if a NAS becomes unavailable during a TimeMachine run it then shits itself and wants to ignore any exclusions and backup the entire disk. It also doesn't handle disk full issues well either and often repeats this cycle then.

[Jack2012]

Re: It would be far fucking better

why dont you just put a spotlight privacy exclusion on the time machine drive? Then it wont be indexed.

[tommy060289]

Re: It would be far fucking better

Have you tried going Into disk utility and repairing disk permissions? Worked for me!

[N2]

Re: It would be far fucking better

If you sat your time capsule on a 3mm alloy plate with some spacers to allow a little air under it.

I know this is a kludge, but it works fine for any device where a tad of additional cooling may make a difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

While yer in Bug Fix Mode...

How about spending some of them Billions on fixing the IOS Battery drain issue that was due to be fixed before Christmas, or the vanishing calendar events in iCloud, or the (still) dodgy BlueTooth stack in OS X, or producing a reliable Thunderbolt cable...

[Richard Cartledge]

At 38KB, this must be Apple's smallest ever update.

[Silverburn]

Thats because all it is is:

10 DELETE timemachine.prefs

20 WRITE "line 2000: COL 200 [;"]"

30 RESTART SERVICE: TIMEMACHINE

40 PRINT "Apple has added the following 12 pages of addendums to your privacy terms and conditions...."

Caveat 1: Poor BASIC scripting part of the joke

Caveat 2: I like my apple

[P. Lee]

timemachine device?

You must be mad! iscsi all the way. Ok, I have an imac and its wired, so I don't know about wireless iscsi...

Server host > timemachine and costs about the same, if its linux. Pretty much any old PC will do.

Server hosts are also handy for pxe booting your work laptop into something usable at home without getting into trouble. The mythbuntu livecd comes up quickly loaded over 100mb/s ethernet, or you can use LTSP for a more full-featured experience. The choice is yours, at boot time. Or more likely, the choice is your kids, as you've got the OSX GUI host :D

[Mark 65]

Re: timemachine device?

That livecd comes up quickly over a multi-boot enabled USB3 stick too. Less need for anything specialised then.

[Hans 1]

Re: timemachine device?

Server hosts are also handy for pxe booting your work laptop into something usable at home without getting into trouble.

You work for the wrong company!

Your work laptop is useless ?

Why not get a CD to reset local admin password, and take the box off the domain. Create local username with same password as your domain account - change password when required with outlook webmail.

If you really want a productive laptop:

Install Ubuntu on it, there, done ...

I just whopped a 512Gb SSD into my work laptop with GNU/Linux ... for some reason, Windows 7 did not want to boot from it because of some BS drive signing or something, tough, Linux it will be ... always wanted to get rid of WinSlows 7 anyway.

[Jay 2]

Another +1 for SuperDuper! here. I use TimeMachine for everyday stuff and do full-on clones every week or so (every few weeks for the offsite drive).

[Hans 1]

You could do the same with subversion, not CCC, SD, RSYNC ....

You could do the same with subversion ... but you would not have the cool UI you get with tm ...

CCC, SuperDuper, rsync ... all fine and good, but leave you with one instant backup, no versioning ...