Time Machine problems and questions

[pedzsan]

I am now getting the message "The network backup disk does not support the required capabilities." The backup disk is a TrueNAS partition. It has been working for a year and in fact, it worked just yesterday but the backup didn't finish. The last successful backup was 2/26. I have it backing up once a week and I've been out of town for two weeks.

Questions:

1. Has anyone encounter this problem within the past month?
2. If I delete the current backup disk and try to attach it again, will it discover the existing backups and just continue where it's left off?
3. On a different topic, I would prefer to do Time Machine to an off site cloud service. Does anyone offer such a service?

 

[HDFan]

Don't know about your NAS issue. I have tried TM backups to multiple NAS units and they always eventually fail so gave up.

A 3-2-1 backup strategy should have no more then 1 TM backup as they tend to fail. For the other 2 you can use a regular backup cloud service such as Backblaze, Crashplan, etc. or physical media such as disks or SSDs updated with programs such as Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

[Amazon Rainforest]

I have found that deleting (removing) a backup disk and re-attaching it didn't cause any issues. I suffered no loss of data. Time Machine recognized the disk as one of its backups and happily started using it again. You might consider removing the disk and re-attaching it.

I too use a NAS for TM backup (almost four years). Mine is a QNAP NAS and when I set up the partitions, I told the NAS software to allocate one specifically for TM. The NAS software seems TM aware and when I set TM up on my MacBook Pro, I didn't have to specify anything about the NAS, name, IP, etc. The NAS TM partition just showed up in the list of available drives. Time Machine formatted the partition and started saving data to it.

 

[HDFan]

Mine is a QNAP NAS and when I set up the partitions, I told the NAS software to allocate one specifically for TM.

Maybe the issue was that I didn't set up a separate partition, wanting to be space flexible. My ~ 4TB TM backups to my QNAP were so slow, I suppose due to all of those small files and network overhead, that hourly backups turned into 1/2 day backups. Then they would get corrupted and have to be redone.

 

[pedzsan]

Something appears broken or changed with my setup. I deleted the TM entry and tried to re-add it. It asks for the user ID and password so I provide it. The TM partition is mounted on my desktop but the GUI comes back around with the same dialog box asking for my ID and password. I can try this a second time, a second image is mounted on the desktop and the dialog box appears again. So... I have a problem... how to solve it?

I took a trip for two weeks during which I was away from home and away from my backup device and the Mac pointed out that I had not backed up for 21 days. I have my documents in iCloud and my photographs in BackBlaze so any valuable data is in the cloud somewhere. But it got me thinking.

Time Machine has two features that I want:

1. The ability to recover files I accidentally deleted. This may be a file that I deleted some time back and didn't notice so it may or may not be in the local snapshots.
2. The ability to completely restore my laptop in the case of a disaster

Both of these greatly suggest that I want my TM backup with me when I travel. And I am planning on traveling almost continuously for the rest of my life.

I'm going to stew on this a while longer but I think I'm going to go back to a real disk for my TM backup and then push that image up to BackBlaze.

I also have vague evidence that TM backups over WiFi take a rather long time -- often more than an hour it seems.

 

[gilby101]

I'm going to stew on this a while longer but I think I'm going to go back to a real disk for my TM backup and then push that image up to BackBlaze.

Real disk for TM backup: Yes, and it can be an SSD when travelling.
Push backup to Backblaze: No. Usually it is a bad idea to backup a backup and I am not sure it would work with Backblaze. Better to backup the source directly with Backblaze. [I prefer Arq Backup]

 

[pedzsan]

Push backup to Backblaze: No. Usually it is a bad idea to backup a backup and I am not sure it would work with Backblaze. Better to backup the source directly with Backblaze. [I prefer Arq Backup]

Ok. Yea… backup of a backup does sound pretty flaky.

 

[HDFan]

Time Machine has two features that I want:

1. The ability to recover files I accidentally deleted. This may be a file that I deleted some time back and didn't notice

It has that feature. That's why a HD in many cases is a better TM backup device since you can increase history length by increasing the disk size. I keep 8 or more months of history by using a 6 TB TM disk.

Push backup to Backblaze: No.

Absolutely. Backup directly to Backblaze. If you are really paranoid turn on infinite history for a small extra charge.