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

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

Bobzhuman — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:30:52 -0000

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.

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

farouqtaj — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:40:54 -0000

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.

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

Yacko — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:22:14 -0000

"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.

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

gregorylent — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 05:31:57 -0000

there is a reason apple is a case study in marketing textbooks .. they were good at it... nothing lasts forever though

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

neutrino23 — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:55:43 -0000

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.

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

Louis Gray — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:06:08 -0000

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!

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

:HAn. — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:17:54 -0000

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.

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

Me — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:00:56 -0000

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.

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

Jake — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:30:15 -0000

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.

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

Louis Gray — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:51:07 -0000

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.

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

Marcin Grodzicki — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:45:59 -0000

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.

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

JP Voilleque — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:29:39 -0000

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.