[sfgs]

Jerame wrote:

"Has anyone besides me noticed that the restore functionality doesn't work? I've run the updates, Time Machine sees my drive and backs up to it, but when I enter the Time Machine interface, I get bupkis. I cannot scroll through the days of data, nothing. All I get is Today"




I also had these problems and an Apple tech asked if I had Intego security software installed. As soon as I disabled Net Barrier X5 and Virus Barrier X5, Time Machine worked perfectly. No more freezing of screen and functionality returned.

After further experimentation, Virus Barrier X5 alone was the culprit and must be disabled. Of course, if you use TM on an automatic hourly basis, you will not have any virus protection. I emailed Intego on this matter but no reply as the US techs are on training this week.

Hope this helps...

[chrislaf]

Making another attempt at using the WD 500GB My Book hooked to the AEBSn via USB hub for a TM backup.

Before I connected the 500GB HD to the AEBSn I connected it to the iMac via USB (previously was FireWire) and ran a verify disk. To my surprise the disk had many errors and disk utility could not repair them on the first pass. The second pass was more successful and it even did a third pass without me starting it, after which the disk came out OK. Aside from directory damage which was repaired and I have seen before many times on other disks, I got an error that said something like invalid access control list with a series of numbers. This seemed strange because it was directly plugged into my iMac via USB. The access control list is familiar because my AEBSn has one set up, but I have never seen this with a HD directly attached to the computer.

Anyway everything seems to be working OK for now - the iMac has created a new sparseimage file and is doing a full backup. I have left the backups.backups folder that TM used when the drive was directly connected to the iMac. It will be interesting to see whether the sparseimage file picks up from where the old TM backups left off when I enter TM and travel through 'time'.

Also, this time I can access my AEBSn from my macbook while TM is backing up the iMac. Before the AEBSn hung. Still in the early stages of testing this setup, but so far everything is going well. If this works for the iMac I will then see if it will work for my wife's macbook which already had a sparseimage file on the HD when it was connected to the iMac.

If it works then I don't have to keep the imac on all the time - keeping my fingers crossed.

Chris

[chrislaf]

Update:

My first re-attempt to backup the iMac and my wife's MacBook failed and I had the problem that sfgs reported above (only the 'today' time was visible), so I started from scratch. I wiped the 500GB drive with disk utility and re-named it a different name. I then trashed the preferences on both the iMac and the Macbook and started a backup from the beginning. Both did a complete backup and so far everything is working. The time bar on the right side is now working properly and I can travel through time to previous dates.

Will see in the coming week whether this setup continues to work.

Chris

[vseh]

Just like Jerame, I've been able to create a sparseimage backup to which TM writes. However the backup isn't functional and just stays at "today" despite there being multiple time and day backups within the image.
I have no anti-viral software running.

[chrislaf]

vseh,
That was happening to me too. Mine's working now, although I'm still in the early stages of testing. It is keeping incremental date backups and is showing the times correctly on the right side of TM. To get this to work I had to Erase my USB backup drive with disk utility (directly attached it via USB to my iMac) and then re-named the empty drive a different name than it had before. I then deleted the TM preference files from each of my macs that are going to backup to it via airport and TM and restarted them. I also unplugged my AEBSn (fast ethernet) and plugged in the USB drive to the hub and powered it on. Then I started the AEBSn. I then set up new TM backups on my two computers and let them make a complete backup (one at a time). Since I did this everything seems to be working fine (so far!).

Hope this helps,

Chris

[rwolfman]

I hooked up my IOMega 750GB external to my Airport Extreme; it shows up nicely in Time Machine, and it allows me to select it as the backup drive; I then initiate a backup, and it starts ok (100GB to backup!); several hours later 9approx. halfway through), I get a "Time Machine Failed to Backup" error msg, and I have to start over again!?! This has happened several times now - I can't get through the initial backup. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on here? Thanks!

[dfs]

One possibility: every sparsebundle has a predetermined size. When you create one manually with Disk Utility, setting its size is one of the choices you are prompted to make (it is, incidentally, a VERY bad idea to create one with a larger capacity than the volume you're going to store it on, this may seem to work at first but after it grows in size it will plunge you into the proverbial world of pain). When you create a sparsebundle as part Time Machine's very first backup, it somehow determines the size automatically (although I have no idea exactly how). So it may be the case that for some reason it is creating one of a size less than 100GB and stops backing up when it gets filled up. Try this. Trash your current sparsebundle and start another initial backup. When Time Machine has created a new sparsebundle, make a note of the name Time Machine assigns it. Then abort the process and trash that sparsebundle too. Then launch Disk Utility. Go to Help, find the item "Creating a blank disk image for storage". Read it, or better yet, print it out. Then create a sparsebundle manually, give it exactly the same name as the one Time Machine had assigned to the one it was making, and when you are prompted to make a choice, make sure that its size is well above 100GB. Place it on the volume to which you wish to backup. If all goes well, Time Machine will see it and will back up to it. If my stab at identifying your problem is correct, this will do the trick (if not, not). Good luck!

[chrislaf]

rwolfman,

This happened to me too.

First I tried to use my TM backup drive that was originally attached to my iMac and doing TM backups. My wife's macbook backed up via the imac over the network and this was working fine. Then apple released the firmware update to the AEBSn. When I moved this setup to the AEBSn neither the imac nor the macbook backed up properly and my AEBSn kept hanging.

Second, I erased the drive but kept the same name and tried to use the original TM prefs. When this didn't work I trashed the sparse files and the TM prefs but I got the result you are getting (backups getting half way then the error message you got.) In addition the new iMac backup was not keeping time (ie., always stuck on Today even though backups were occuring).

Third, I erased the drive with disk utility and re-named it a different name and wiped the TM prefs off both macs that backup via TM. I shut down the macs and the AEBSn then connected the drive to the AEBSn and powered up both, then I powered up the two macs and began a backup to the newly named drive one at a time for the initial backup. So far this is working properly.

What worked for me was to completely erase the backup drive and re-name it then wipe the TM prefs. I started everything from scratch (like I had never used TM before).

Hope this helps,

Chris

[dfs]

It's a very sweet deal -- if you don't already own an AirPort Extreme.

[dfs]

This update is great if you have a USB h. d. attached to AirPort Extreme. But what if you have an ethernet-only external hard disk (like the ethernet-model LaCie Big Disk)? Still not officially supported, Time Machine still refuses to create a sparsebundel container on your disk. Sure, you can manually create one after a bit of fiddling around, in fact I have rigged this up so both Macs on my LAN are backing up to my disk with Time Machine. But I'd be a lot less nervous if this were officially supported since I'd feel more a lot more confident that my data won't suddenly go south. It would also make sense for Apple to make Time Machine a bit more LAN-friendly, by allowing the user to set specific backup times (so that you could stagger your backups and multiple Macs wouldn't be backing up at the same time).

[sfgs]

I posted before about an incompatibility of Time Machine with Intego Virus Barrier X5. I finally got a chance to speak with Intego Tech Support. The fix is simple:

Open Virus Barrier X5
Open Preferences
Click 'Scanner'
Go to 'Trusted Zone'
Click on '+' and add the drive you wish to use for Time Machine or drag the drive's icon to the Zone area.

As I no longer have Time Capsule and my new drive is not here yet, I cannot test this but it makes sense.

Update: My new WD Home Studio Edition 1TB drive arrived and the fix works. I timed my initial backup at 1GB/minute and auto saves work fine.

[ajs811]

For the life of me I cannot get this to work. Whether I plug my disk directly into the USB port on the Airport Extreme or plug it into a hub which is plugged into the Airport, the disk simply does not show up. I already verified and repaired it like the article suggested.
Any thoughts? Thanks,
Adam

[sfgs]

Just in case you have not seen this: http://www.macworld....memachine2.html and scroll down to "Fix unrecognized disks".

This article goes into greater detail on how to verify and repair the disk.

[refusenik]

Thanks to this article I was able to get time machine to recognize a airport connected disk as a backup drive. It seems all set up, but after the backup begins to run, I get the error message "The backup disk image could not be created." Naturally I have no idea what this means, much less how to fix it. Does anyone have any suggestions? The Apple website is no help as it still maintains that airport disks are not supported by time Machine, despite the recent software update. Thanks.