Time Machine - A Truly Terrible App

[lockerc18]

I'm using a mid-2012 rMBP running El Capitan, with a NetGear R6300 router and a WD MyCloud 2 TB NAS for backups.

I have been unable to get a Time Machine backup done since the day I installed El Capitan. I've tried, and tried, and it always got stuck on some low level number of bytes backed up.

I tried a suggestion in the WD forums to get it to work, which was to do a System Restore of the WD settings and set up the backup disk again. That seemed to work, and the Time Machine backup was proceeding along at a normal pace.

Until I saw this in the console:

11/8/15 6:07:56.127 PM com.apple.cts[42] com.apple.revisiond.requeue_chunking: scheduler_evaluate_activity told me to run this job; however, but the start time isn't for 7200 seconds. Ignoring.

Then, Time Machine counted down. All 7200 seconds worth, until every last one of those seconds expired. And gave error log entries all along the way. If you do the math, that comes out to be a neat 120 minutes. Or, 2 hours. Totally, absolutely wasted time, all because of some kind of an interface bug where Time Machine evidently failed to send a correct parameter to one internal routine or another.

2 full hours. Wasted.

On top of the 7 hours that this thing has been running already.

On top of the 3 hours it's been "cleaning up". Which is still running. And running. And running.

I don't know OSX internals or Time Machine internals. But I do know a hell of a lot about computing, and enterprise backup and restore in particular. And I've never seen anything like this before.

My opinion is that Time Machine is an incredibly poorly implemented app. Truly awful. And yet, before El Capitan, it worked pretty well. Not flawlessly, but OK. To the point where it was usable and effective.

But not any longer.

Apple should be ashamed of this. Given the debacles with IOS8 and 9, I figured El Capitan would be good. But, silly me, why should this be any different than any other Apple software?

Apple's quality control is not just bad. It's awful, to the point of being embarrassing and frankly unprofessional.

What the hell has happened to Apple in recent years?

 

[fisherking]

considering that not everyone is having these problems, maybe the thing to do is...get help, instead of making speeches, or whining. what debacles with ios8 and 9? am loving 9.

i keep trying to understand why, when someone has a problem, they decide that it's universal, and we ALL must have that problem.

perhaps try a different drive? just to see? are there reports of WD drive issues with 10.11? meanwhile, there's a whole forum's worth of helpful people here. maybe someone can help...

 

[lockerc18]

considering that not everyone is having these problems, maybe the thing to do is...get help, instead of making speeches, or whining. what debacles with ios8 and 9? am loving 9.

i keep trying to understand why, when someone has a problem, they decide that it's universal, and we ALL must have that problem.

perhaps try a different drive? just to see? are there reports of WD drive issues with 10.11? meanwhile, there's a whole forum's worth of helpful people here. maybe someone can help...

Do you really think I'm the only one who's had a bad experience with Time Machine? Just take a quick look around the various Mac sites and you'll see how widespread the problems with it are. And El Capitan seems to have broken it for lots of users.

And IOS8 and 9 were both terrible on my iPad3, and not just because it's an older device.

I'm not going to debug Apple's software for them. If they can't develop quality products, that's their problem, not mine. I'll just go back to Windows and Android.

 

[garirry]

I'm using a mid-2012 rMBP running El Capitan, with a NetGear R6300 router and a WD MyCloud 2 TB NAS for backups.

I have been unable to get a Time Machine backup done since the day I installed El Capitan. I've tried, and tried, and it always got stuck on some low level number of bytes backed up.

I tried a suggestion in the WD forums to get it to work, which was to do a System Restore of the WD settings and set up the backup disk again. That seemed to work, and the Time Machine backup was proceeding along at a normal pace.

Until I saw this in the console:

11/8/15 6:07:56.127 PM com.apple.cts[42] com.apple.revisiond.requeue_chunking: scheduler_evaluate_activity told me to run this job; however, but the start time isn't for 7200 seconds. Ignoring.

Then, Time Machine counted down. All 7200 seconds worth, until every last one of those seconds expired. And gave error log entries all along the way. If you do the math, that comes out to be a neat 120 minutes. Or, 2 hours. Totally, absolutely wasted time, all because of some kind of an interface bug where Time Machine evidently failed to send a correct parameter to one internal routine or another.

2 full hours. Wasted.

On top of the 7 hours that this thing has been running already.

On top of the 3 hours it's been "cleaning up". Which is still running. And running. And running.

I don't know OSX internals or Time Machine internals. But I do know a hell of a lot about computing, and enterprise backup and restore in particular. And I've never seen anything like this before.

My opinion is that Time Machine is an incredibly poorly implemented app. Truly awful. And yet, before El Capitan, it worked pretty well. Not flawlessly, but OK. To the point where it was usable and effective.

But not any longer.

Apple should be ashamed of this. Given the debacles with IOS8 and 9, I figured El Capitan would be good. But, silly me, why should this be any different than any other Apple software?

Apple's quality control is not just bad. It's awful, to the point of being embarrassing and frankly unprofessional.

What the hell has happened to Apple in recent years?

You better tell me you tried erasing the drive and then backing your drive up prior to posting this? I haven't used TM for El Capitán, but from what I've heard, it hasn't changed, so I think it's something on your part.

 

[maxsix]

My personal experience with time machine on each of my four current model Apple laptops running El Capitan has been flawless.

When Apple does things right it's just terrific. Time Machine is one of the truly excellent products created by Apple. I've been using it for years and years without a single fault. An amazing testimony indeed.

Fast fun and very easy, one couldn't ask for a better product.

Thanks Apple

 

[Shirasaki]

Ok. I truly believe you know "widely spread"!="everyone have". A trivial rant.

But, if you can just format your disk normally in El Capitan, and retry backup using time machine? I agree that recent Apple software is far beyond the level of those in old times. But I also have a WD drive, and I just format it in Mac OS X using disk utility. My time machine saves me multiple hours of re-downloading many hard to find apps, and reconfiguring the whole system when BootCamp is broken.

 

[lockerc18]

You better tell me you tried erasing the drive and then backing your drive up prior to posting this? I haven't used TM for El Capitán, but from what I've heard, it hasn't changed, so I think it's something on your part.

System restore saves the data but resets the device. But evidently, El Capitan did change TM in some ways.

 

[garirry]

System restore saves the data but resets the device. But evidently, El Capitan did change TM in some ways.

I have no idea what that post means.

 

[fisherking]

Do you really think I'm the only one who's had a bad experience with Time Machine? Just take a quick look around the various Mac sites and you'll see how widespread the problems with it are. And El Capitan seems to have broken it for lots of users.

And IOS8 and 9 were both terrible on my iPad3, and not just because it's an older device.

I'm not going to debug Apple's software for them. If they can't develop quality products, that's their problem, not mine. I'll just go back to Windows and Android.

no one's saying you're the only one. i'm saying...what are the numbers? are millions of macusers having issues with TM in 10.11? dozens? 7? you can point to ANY version of OS X, and there's someone with a problem. and just because you had issues with ios 8 and 9...doesn't make it global. no problem is universal...unless it is.

perhaps a move back to windows and android's a good idea. those systems never have problems....

 

[lockerc18]

I have no idea what that post means.

"System Restore" is an operation you can do on WD NAS devices to reset them to their factory settings without erasing the data on them. This operation will delete the connection of the NAS to the Mac, so in essence, it is like attaching a different device to the system the next time you select is as your TM disk. This operation also deletes any caching or indexing to the NAS.

When you said "You better tell me you tried erasing the drive and then backing your drive up prior to posting this?", there are two ways to interpret your statement: 1) "erasing the drive" means you believe I should erase my Mac hard drive, which doesn't apply, since El Capitan was an update; or 2) erase my WD drive, which also doesn't apply, since then you'd be saying that it's a requirement to reformat your backup drive before you can use it with El Capitan, and that would erase your backup data.

For you and all the others here who can't find it possible that an Apple OS has an actual bug in it, let me state this very clearly:

Time Machine was running well ever since I got my mid-2012 rMBP. Then, I installed El Capitan. Then, Time Machine stopped working. Hence, El Capitan broke Time Machine.

That is a bug. Of course it doesn't apply to everyone. But it applies to me. And to many others. How many others? Who knows? Who cares? Enough so that there are lots of threads about it on many Mac sites. And you bet I'm sick and tired of Apple bugs, after my experiences with IOS 8 and 9. I haven't seen that level of poor quality in OSX before, but now I am. And there is no reason for it, aside from sloppy development practices.

Apple has to do better.

 

[garirry]

"System Restore" is an operation you can do on WD NAS devices to reset them to their factory settings without erasing the data on them. This operation will delete the connection of the NAS to the Mac, so in essence, it is like attaching a different device to the system the next time you select is as your TM disk. This operation also deletes any caching or indexing to the NAS.

Not a master when it comes to RAID devices, but I'm pretty sure any sane person formats the drive using a disk manager rather than some "utility" that comes with the drive.

When you said "You better tell me you tried erasing the drive and then backing your drive up prior to posting this?", there are two ways to interpret your statement: 1) "erasing the drive" means you believe I should erase my Mac hard drive, which doesn't apply, since El Capitan was an update; or 2) erase my WD drive, which also doesn't apply, since then you'd be saying that it's a requirement to reformat your backup drive before you can use it with El Capitan, and that would erase your backup data.

First off, yes I'm talking about option 2, sorry if it isn't very clear. Second, if you need to reformat something to make it work, it DOES NOT MEAN it's a requirement. If the problem was widespread enough, people would be talking **** about it every day. So, how are you so certain that El Capitán is the one causing the issue?

That is a bug. Of course it doesn't apply to everyone. But it applies to me. And to many others. How many others? Who knows? Who cares? Enough so that there are lots of threads about it on many Mac sites. And you bet I'm sick and tired of Apple bugs, after my experiences with IOS 8 and 9. I haven't seen that level of poor quality in OSX before, but now I am. And there is no reason for it, aside from sloppy development practices.

Apple has to do better.

Okay that's enough. I have NEVER heard of an issue similar to yours anywhere. And believe me when I say I was on the Internet since El Capitán's debut. So, shut your little mouth up, and stop being so hateful and ignorant.

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm using a mid-2012 rMBP running El Capitan, with a NetGear R6300 router and a WD MyCloud 2 TB NAS for backups.

There is your problem right there. You are using unsupported hardware for Time Machine and this issue will need to be resolved by the third party hardware manufacturer through a firmware/software update.

I just looked in the WD support forums and you are not the only one with this issue under El Capitan.

Every time there is an OS X upgrade we see some users of third party NAS devices like this having Time Machine problems. You are probably correct that El Capitan (Apple) changed something about the way Time Machine works and caused this, but that is the risk you run when using unsupported hardware.

 

[Eithanius]

11/8/15 6:07:56.127 PM com.apple.cts[42] com.apple.revisiond.requeue_chunking: scheduler_evaluate_activity told me to run this job; however, but the start time isn't for 7200 seconds. Ignoring.

I also get this console messages despite not using and not activating Time Machine at all, and no external drive connected...

Apple should be ashamed of this. Given the debacles with IOS8 and 9, I figured El Capitan would be good. But, silly me, why should this be any different than any other Apple software?

Apple's quality control is not just bad. It's awful, to the point of being embarrassing and frankly unprofessional.

What the hell has happened to Apple in recent years?

What the hell happened...?

http://macdailynews.com/2015/11/07/apples-best-days-are-behind-it-or-something/

 

[powersteer]

I really love my Time Machine, saved me countless times. Working perfectly fine on my El Cap.

 

[leman]

So wait a moment, you are using a device that is officially not supported by Time Machine and not guarantied to work with time machine and you complain that Time Machine is horrible because it does not work? I have some problems following your logic here

That said, I have a full backup infrastructure, consisting of OS X Servers (running 10.6, 10.10 and 10.11), Time Capsules, LaCie network drives as well as local USB/Thunderbolt drives, which backup a dozen or two computers, and I have yet to encounter a problem in the last year or so. If everything would work as reliably as TM, I'd be really happy. Of course, anecdotic evidence is anecdotic evidence, but I think that if there were any fundamental problems with TM I would certainly experience them by now with my hybrid setup.

 

[simonsi]

Cool, lets all hear about the OP's experiences of Enterprise Backup and Restore on unsupported hardware...can't wait...

 

[lockerc18]

Not a master when it comes to RAID devices, but I'm pretty sure any sane person formats the drive using a disk manager rather than some "utility" that comes with the drive.

First off, yes I'm talking about option 2, sorry if it isn't very clear. Second, if you need to reformat something to make it work, it DOES NOT MEAN it's a requirement. If the problem was widespread enough, people would be talking **** about it every day. So, how are you so certain that El Capitán is the one causing the issue?

Okay that's enough. I have NEVER heard of an issue similar to yours anywhere. And believe me when I say I was on the Internet since El Capitán's debut. So, shut your little mouth up, and stop being so hateful and ignorant.

" I have NEVER heard of an issue similar to yours anywhere. "

Google is your friend. I am not the only one experiencing this issue.

"So, shut your little mouth up, and stop being so hateful and ignorant."

Now, there's an intelligent comment. Thanks for playing.

 

[Crazy Badger]

Another Time Machine user without any issues

I'm using it with a FreeNAS server to backup 3 OSX devices, and it's been running without too many problems since 10.8 and through the updates. Every now and again it will stop running on my partners MBA and she won't notice for a number of weeks. It might restart, or it might need to do a full backup, but it's not a big problem. All her data is synced to an ownCloud server anyway, so it's just an extra backup. Can't remember any issues on my MBA or iMac.

 

[lockerc18]

So wait a moment, you are using a device that is officially not supported by Time Machine and not guarantied to work with time machine and you complain that Time Machine is horrible because it does not work? I have some problems following your logic here

I don't agree. Mac support is all over the WD site, including the pages for my 2TB model. If Apple didn't support it, they couldn't do that. Check http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=3561 . It seems pretty clear, unless you have a link to specific Apple information to the contrary.

 

[Crazy Badger]

Pretty sure you'll find that Apple don't "support" the use of anything other than their own Time Capsule for Time Machine backups, but that's not to say it doesn't work on other 3rd party devices. When it was first released it wouldn't even work on other devices!

It's going to need a fairly major overall in future OSX updates when Apple start phasing out AFP in preference for SMB. It's started, but at some point they'll drop AFP all together and need a new Time Machine.

 

[leman]

I don't agree. Mac support is all over the WD site, including the pages for my 2TB model. If Apple didn't support it, they couldn't do that. Check http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=3561 . It seems pretty clear, unless you have a link to specific Apple information to the contrary.

Sorry, but I am not that bored that I would dig out the documentation for you. You'll just have to trust me on this one: Apple only officially supports Time Machine over network on Time Capsule and on OS X Server. That's it.

TO make this more clear: the TM implementation that is used by WD is in no way designed, written or certified by Apple, and is certainly not approved by Apple. That said, I have had fairly good experiences with open-source TM emulation (Netatalk), but again, this is a reverse-engineered solution which could miss some of the intricacies of the original protocol.

 

[leman]

It's going to need a fairly major overall in future OSX updates when Apple start phasing out AFP in preference for SMB. It's started, but at some point they'll drop AFP all together and need a new Time Machine.

Yep, they have moved almost everything to SMB, but as far as I can tell, Time Machine still backs up over AFP, even on 10.11 (both client and server). It would be curious to see what kind of solution they come up with. AFAIK, SMB does not have the necessary features that are required for TM backups. Maybe we will indeed see some sort of snapshot-based filesystem-like solution based on Core Storage? That would be dandy.

 

[sjinsjca]

Apple only officially supports Time Machine over network on Time Capsule and on OS X Server. That's it.

Almost right. Add recent-model AirPort Extreme with external USB drives. I have five attached, mostly WD ironically enough, and it works well for our family's menagerie o' Macs.

 

[lockerc18]

Sorry, but I am not that bored that I would dig out the documentation for you. You'll just have to trust me on this one: Apple only officially supports Time Machine over network on Time Capsule and on OS X Server. That's it.

TO make this more clear: the TM implementation that is used by WD is in no way designed, written or certified by Apple, and is certainly not approved by Apple. That said, I have had fairly good experiences with open-source TM emulation (Netatalk), but again, this is a reverse-engineered solution which could miss some of the intricacies of the original protocol.

"You'll just have to trust me on this one"

I'll be sure to do that.

 

[garirry]

"You'll just have to trust me on this one"

I'll be sure to do that.

If you aren't going to listen to anyone here, why are you even asking for advice?