How to start a new Time Capsule backup without deleting the old backup???

[ftaok]

I've been having an issue with my wife's MBP for about a year now. Her Mac doesn't seem to ever want to finish backing up. It gets stuck on the final step for days and days. Every once in a while, it finishes, but that's a rare occurance.

Her MBP is running out of HDD space, so after we off-load a bunch of her yearbook photos onto the NAS, I'd like to start over with new back-up onto our Time Capsule. All of the things I'm seeing on the web say to delete the old back up and then make a new one. I'd rather make a new one first, then delete the old one. I have enough space on the Time Capsule to do so. I just can't figure out how to start a new backup while the old one is still on the Time Capsule.

Any tips and tricks?

 

[sugargliderdude]

I've been having an issue with my wife's MBP for about a year now. Her Mac doesn't seem to ever want to finish backing up. It gets stuck on the final step for days and days. Every once in a while, it finishes, but that's a rare occurance.

Her MBP is running out of HDD space, so after we off-load a bunch of her yearbook photos onto the NAS, I'd like to start over with new back-up onto our Time Capsule. All of the things I'm seeing on the web say to delete the old back up and then make a new one. I'd rather make a new one first, then delete the old one. I have enough space on the Time Capsule to do so. I just can't figure out how to start a new backup while the old one is still on the Time Capsule.

Any tips and tricks?

thought about just getting another external hard drive to back up? I have three devices for time machine.

Only guessing, but I wonder if your HDD being nearly full is making the time machine slow to complete? that or the hard drive is failing.

I have a T5 samsung, 256GB 3.1 USB Stick and a m.2 for time machines.

I would clone your wifes HDD with a larger sized SSD and get a new device for the time machine.

 

[ftaok]

thought about just getting another external hard drive to back up? I have three devices for time machine.

Only guessing, but I wonder if your HDD being nearly full is making the time machine slow to complete? that or the hard drive is failing.

I have a T5 samsung, 256GB 3.1 USB Stick and a m.2 for time machines.

I would clone your wifes HDD with a larger sized SSD and get a new device for the time machine.

Yeah, that's a good idea. I should just do a SuperDuper backup and start over. I'm not sure how I can check to see if her drive is failing, but I guess that's what the back-ups are for.

 

[sugargliderdude]

Yeah, that's a good idea. I should just do a SuperDuper backup and start over. I'm not sure how I can check to see if her drive is failing, but I guess that's what the back-ups are for.

 

[HDFan]

so after we off-load a bunch of her yearbook photos onto the NAS, I'd like to start over with new back-up onto our Time Capsule. All of the things I'm seeing on the web say to delete the old back up and then make a new one.

'
Why not make a TM backup to the NAS? Once you are sure it is OK you can then delete and recreate the TC backup.

 

[ftaok]

'
Why not make a TM backup to the NAS? Once you are sure it is OK you can then delete and recreate the TC backup.

That was the intent of the NAS, but after getting it and trying to set it up ... I gave up. My Time Capsule is a 3GB model and we only have 4 Macs to back-up (really only two because my girls use GoogleDocs for practically everything).

I guess in the future, I could take another stab at setting up the NAS as a TM drive. In my younger days, I would have grinded it out and had it all set up ... bells and whistles. Now that I'm getting old, I just want to plug stuff in and have it work. I guess I'm Apple's target customer after all.

EDIT - I actually used to back up our Macs using an external HDD and SuperDuper. My wife's backup is probably in the basement somewhere. I'll dig that out, do a backup and erase her backups from the TC and start over. That's the plan. Just got to block out the time to do it.

 

[Fishrrman]

Fishrrman's "broken record, will he ever stop posting this!" advice:
1. STOP using tm
2. Get an external drive
3. Get CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper
4. Use either CCC or SD to create a cloned backup, and then incrementally maintain the bakcup
Do this, and the backups won't continually "grow in size" as they do with tm.

 

[ftaok]

Fishrrman's "broken record, will he ever stop posting this!" advice:
1. STOP using tm
2. Get an external drive
3. Get CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper
4. Use either CCC or SD to create a cloned backup, and then incrementally maintain the bakcup
Do this, and the backups won't continually "grow in size" as they do with tm.

I do have SuperDuper and plenty of external drives. However, SD/CCC and TM serve different functions. As I'm sure you're aware, TM backs up files that may have since been deleted. The downsides are that the backup is not bootable and (as you've pointed out), the backup file grows and grows and grows.

The main issue with SD/CCC backups are that they are not automatic. We use laptops, so there is friction involved to plug in the drive and start a backup. The level of discipline just isn't there in my family (please, no judgement). The TC just does it's thing automatically, when it works properly.

Honestly, there's room for both in everyone's setup. Neither is foolproof and the more backups, the better.

 

[mpainesyd]

I have 3 external drives for TM. TM automatically alternates between them when they are connected. One is an off-site backup And one is connected to another Mac on my network. I had to give up using a Time Capsule which was failing and got frustrated trying to set up a network drive to replace it (it required me to create an online account just so I could access it on my local network).
There are several possible reasons for slow/frozen TM backups - backup drive nearly full, backup drive corrupted and Mac drive corrupted (unusual). You can try running Disk Utility to check. There is also Apple Hardware Diagnostics that you could try (search Apple Support for instructions).