![]() When I got home and told Time Machine to backup to the Time Capsule here rather than my office disk (why can’t it remember that I have two backup disks?). ![]() In the days before Time Machine I always did a manual backup before travelling as I knew that was when things were most likely to go wrong, but now-a-days I have got used to relying on it and forget to check it is working OK … so if you are paranoid about your data, do peek occasionally at Time Machine to check it is still working! This last time in fact the first sign was (iii), but it doesn’t actually tell you (if you don’t look) until it has failed for ten days, by which time I was travelling. ![]() (iii) if you look in the Time Machine preferences it says the backup has failed (ii) it starts to transfer to disk, but then gets stuck part way: (i) it is still saying ‘preparing’ after leaving it overnight! However, at least half-a-dozen times over the last year, my Time Machine has got completely stuck. So, when you see ‘preparing’, just be patient! Lesson 1: make sure you include progress indicators for anything that can take a while, not just the obvious ‘slow’ things. This is when it is running over the disk working out what it needs to backup, and always seems to be the lengthiest operation, actually backing up the disk is often quite fast, and yet, for some reason there is no indication of how far through the ‘preparing’ process it has got. You can tell it is ‘preparing’ because when you open the Time Machine preferences there is the little barbers pole saying ‘preparing’ □ When you first do a backup, or when you haven’t backed up to a particular disk for ages (perhaps if you have been away on a trip), it can spend several hours ‘preparing’. Occasionally Time Machine seems to be stuck, but isn’t really. ![]() … and throughout I’ve dropped in a few lessons for anyone implementing critical system software - maybe the odd Apple engineer is reading how to tell when things are wrong This is my own story of how it goes wrong … and how to put it right. What bit of software do you really need to be reliable? If anything else goes really wrong you have the backup - but if the backup fails you really are lost.Īnd Mac OS X Time Machine, while it does have a very pretty interface, is inclined to get stuck sometimes. Unfortunately only fixing Mac OS X backup, not the Tardis □ … but, nonetheless, critical. ![]()
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