Carbon Copy Cloner Questions. Time Machine unreliable.

[jaybar]

Hi

I have be red n using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. TM keeps saying it cannot back up the drive but CCC HAS no issues. I changed Glyph drives. I changed cables. Problem persists. persists. Only on my husband's account. What might be the problem?

No errors with CCC. Only TM. Also TM issues are intermittent. Sometimes I can go for days without issue.

I am confused.

 

[ChrisA]

... TM keeps saying it cannot back up the drive...

If it says that then you are doing something wrong. To get help you will have to give a lot more details. Perhaps there is not enough space on the TM drive?

 

[jaybar]

If it says that then you are doing something wrong. To get help you will have to give a lot more details. Perhaps there is not enough space on the TM drive?

Hi Chris. Can’t give lots of details. It happens on my husband’s account not mine. We share a Mac. It seems to be a tmp file which I cannot find. I would like to delete all tmp files but don’t know how. I got new hard drives and new cables (external SSD drives and brand new usb-c cables. Did not change anything.

 

[ChrisA]

Hi Chris. Can’t give lots of details. It happens on my husband’s account not mine. We share a Mac. It seems to be a tmp file which I cannot find. I would like to delete all tmp files but don’t know how. I got new hard drives and new cables (external SSD drives and brand new usb-c cables. Did not change anything.

how do you know it is a .tmp file? There must have been some kind of message that pointed to it. These files should be deleted when you log off or re-boot. Perhaps you don' do that and just leave it running.

You can find files by name using the find command in terminal
find / -iname "*.tmp"
will search the entire disk for files with names ending in .tmp

I think Spotlight can do the same

You can dump the time machine log file
log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"'

 

[jaybar]

how do you know it is a .tmp file? There must have been some kind of message that pointed to it. These files should be deleted when you log off or re-boot. Perhaps you don' do that and just leave it running.

You can find files by name using the find command in terminal
find / -iname "*.tmp"
will search the entire disk for files with names ending in .tmp

I think Spotlight can do the same

You can dump the time machine log file
log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"'

Chris. I get a warning message when I click on the red icon I get an error message that gives the file name.

 

[Big Bad D]

Without the exact error message this risks to turn into random troubleshooting advice. A .tmp file existing should not be a reason for Time Machine to fail.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"No errors with CCC. Only TM. Also TM issues are intermittent. Sometimes I can go for days without issue.
I am confused."

Why the confusion?
Fishrrman's "Mac Rule Number 2":
Use what works for you. Don't waste your time trying to use what doesn't.

Got it?

 

[ChrisA]

Chris. I get a warning message when I click on the red icon I get an error message that gives the file name.

You know the filename? Then delete the file if you don't need it. Or if you don't want to delete it, look at file info, to see the read/write permissions and change them.

You know the name but not where it is? Then as said use "find" or "Spotlight" to track it down then do the above.

CCC is a very poor backup system. Here is the scenario. You are working on a document you use CCC to back up. All is good. The next day 10 pages of the document are gone. It could be a user error or a system error or whatever but 10 pages are gone. But you don't notice because you are not working on that document today. Next, you run CCC again. This will overwrite your only good copy of the document with the corrupted version. Backups are no good unless you save them.

"Cloning" works well for backup only if you have 6 or 10 hard drives and you rotate them in a daily and weekly rotation schedule. This allows you to go back some days or weeks to find the last "good" version of your work. TM automates this process for you and lets you do it using only one physical drive (although using two drives is better)

In any case, if your backup system overwrites old backups, it's worthless.

My prediction: In 100 years there will be very few 100-year-old photos because hardly anyone bothers to do backups correctly. It's too bad because I kind of like the old photos from the early 1900s that my great grandparents took of their kids who became my grandparents.

 

[Fishrrman]

"CCC is a very poor backup system. Here is the scenario. You are working on a document you use CCC to back up. All is good. The next day 10 pages of the document are gone. It could be a user error or a system error or whatever but 10 pages are gone. But you don't notice because you are not working on that document today. Next, you run CCC again. This will overwrite your only good copy of the document with the corrupted version. Backups are no good unless you save them."

I suggest you investigate CCC to discover what that app calls the "Safety Net".
With safety net activated, older versions of files are saved, as well as the latest.

I've never lost anything due to CCC.
And I don't even have the safety net feature activated.

 

[Apple_Robert]

"CCC is a very poor backup system. Here is the scenario. You are working on a document you use CCC to back up. All is good. The next day 10 pages of the document are gone. It could be a user error or a system error or whatever but 10 pages are gone. But you don't notice because you are not working on that document today. Next, you run CCC again. This will overwrite your only good copy of the document with the corrupted version. Backups are no good unless you save them."

I suggest you investigate CCC to discover what that app calls the "Safety Net".
With safety net activated, older versions of files are saved, as well as the latest.

I've never lost anything due to CCC.
And I don't even have the safety net feature activated.

You are correct. With Safety Net on, CCC will save files as long as there is plenty of storage. I don't recall CCC overwriting any of my files, although that can happen just like with TM if space becomes limited.

 

[Ben J.]

CCC is perfectly capable of storing versions of files, as often and for as many years as you want. CCC's Safetynet has all but been replaced by Apple's APFS file system's 'Snapshots'. Timemachine also uses snapshots.