DISQUS

louisgray.com: louisgray.com: Apple's "Ease of Use" Fails Me Again, Time Capsule the Culprit

  • JP Voilleque · 1 year ago
    I was lucky enough to have this just work, although there was a slight hang up as it negotiated some sort of complicated peace with my cable modem. Once you get there, I promise it's awesome.
  • Marcin Grodzicki · 1 year ago
    You don't have filevault switched on, do you? Because TM doesn't work if you're logged in to your account while having filevault switched on.
  • Louis Gray · 1 year ago
    No. FileVault is not on. I just checked to make sure. All signs are
    pointing to a hardware issue, that's likely disk-related. Of course,
    that brings up the concern... if I'm backing up all my data, why
    should I trust their disk? Sounds like I'm going to have to get
    RAIDed, and Time Capsule's not the answer there.
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    I have a Time Capsule as well and have yet to check it out. However, Apple quality control have been sliding precipitously in recent years due to the company trying to be all things to everybody. In my opinion, the company simply has too much on its plate and the grab for more dollars is impacting its true mission.
  • Me · 1 year ago
    What a load of whiny BS. Take it back to the Apple store and they will give you a new one or answer your questions. if this is too much for you then go back to pencil and paper. Sheesh.
  • :HAn. · 1 year ago
    I had a lot of problems too at first. It takes some tinkering, but once you get it working (for me anyway), you dont have to think about it ever again. The TC works silently in the background and I never get any issues now. Ive had it running since about the first week of its release.

    Best tip I can give you is if your initial backups fail, make sure to delete the sparse file on the TC before trying again. Youll never get anywhere otherwise.
  • Louis Gray · 1 year ago
    That was a great tip. I went and erased the Time Capsule disk, and it
    now looks like the Time Machine backup is finally working. I'm at 3.4
    GB out of 122.1 GB, so the process will be long, but it looks like
    we'll get there. Thanks!
  • MattMan · 1 year ago
    Um, did you try calling Apple? You should have 90 days of phone support with the Time Capsule. Seems like that's what I'd do.
  • John · 1 year ago
    If you are setting up TC for the first time it is faster to hook up an Ethernet cable. After it has completed the first, huge backup you can switch back to wireless.

    During normal operation Time Machine will sometimes generate an error saying the backup could not be completed. It would be nice to confirm this but my impression is that this is normal. It seems to me that TM tries hard to run unobtrusively. If some other intensive task is running or you are doing a heavy download or upload it might just give up and wait for the next backup, usually just an hour away. If I put my laptop to sleep during a backup I also get this error.

    So far haven't had to use it but I'm glad it is there. I have mounted the TC disk and stored some other large files there. Pretty handy.
  • gregorylent · 1 year ago
    there is a reason apple is a case study in marketing textbooks .. they were good at it... nothing lasts forever though
  • Yacko · 1 year ago
    "That was a great tip. I went and erased the Time Capsule disk"

    As noted don't use a sparse disc image. If you suspect directory problems you should Diskwarrior the drives, source and target. You should have a copy of Diskwarrior anyway for an unlikely but possible disaster. Also look at other backup, perhaps in tandem with Time Machine. Super Duper will make bootable incremental backups and something like Chronosync can be used to backup critical specific files like mail, bookmarks, your usr directory et al, in addition to the other backups you might have. SD and Chrono will cost money and be redundant, but it pays to be a suspenders, belt, and elastic waistband type of guy.
  • farouqtaj · 1 year ago
    The reporting of problems with Apple products is becoming increasingly common on social networks. There is little doubt that Apple have focused more on marketing recently at the expense of product quality.

    This is extremely dangerous as Windows Vista has narrowed the gap significantly with Apple OS and it won't take long for rivals to attack Apple with alternatives. Apple have relied on the blind loyalty of devotees but for how long? Their patience seems to be running short.
  • Bobzhuman · 1 year ago
    I would check that my directory, etc was in pristine shape. Run permissions from an install disk, zap the PRAM, run Diskwarrior, etc. Sounds like there is a "bump" in the road that the machine doesn't want to encounter.

    Most problems in normal installs of a new system upgrade are referenced back to irregularities in the original directory. The same could be true of creating a "clean" dupe.