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Forum Discussion
Time Machine + ReadyNAS Duo: Only TODAY'S backups are kept.
We have two MacBooks (mine is a regular MacBook, my husband's is a Pro) in our household, both running Lion, and we use a ReadyNAS Duo and Time Machine to back up our computers.
Here's the problem: everything appears to be going smoothly (i.e., no errors), but Time Machine simply isn't keeping any backups for my MacBook. Every day for the last week or so I've gone into Time Machine and seen that it will only go back a couple of hours (or sometimes it won't go back at all).
I'm at a complete loss, because I'm not getting any kind of error message; it's just not working. It says it's backing up, but it's not keeping any of the backups!
I checked a few things already:
(1) The ReadyNAS's firmware has been updated. It's running RAIDiator 4.1.8 [1.00a043].
(2) The capacity of the ReadyNAS is 921 GB, of which we are only using 338 GB (36%).
(3) On the ReadyNas interface (Frontview), everything appears to be fine. The capacity for the Time Machine backup is set at 500 GB: more than the capacity of both of our hard drives combined (each of which is around 120 GB).
(4) I backed up my Time Machine backup (using Frontview) to an external hard drive, so that I can look at what's on the Time Machine share. I found two sparsebundle files, corresponding to my laptop and my husband's. When I double-click on either one of the sparsebundles, it gives me an error that says "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Time Machine Backups. You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
HOWEVER, it still mounts the disks (or his at least...read on).
(a) When I double-click on his (which the Info panel tells me is around 60 GB), it mounts a drive called "Time Machine Backups," which contains a folder that seems to have his backups for the last nine months or so.
(b) When I double-click on mine, though (which the Info panel tells me is 147 GB), it mounts a similar drive, but I can't open the folder. It has a red "minus" sign on it, and I can't seem to adjust the permissions using the Info panel (although it says that the System has "Read & Write" access).
I'm getting really frustrated with this whole thing. And the worst part it I have no idea when the problem started. I'm going to guess that it was when we upgraded to Lion (he upgraded about a month ago, and I upgraded a couple of months before that. But I honestly have no idea. I only noticed the problem a couple of weeks ago.
I'd appreciate any help I can get on this!
Thanks!
Here's the problem: everything appears to be going smoothly (i.e., no errors), but Time Machine simply isn't keeping any backups for my MacBook. Every day for the last week or so I've gone into Time Machine and seen that it will only go back a couple of hours (or sometimes it won't go back at all).
I'm at a complete loss, because I'm not getting any kind of error message; it's just not working. It says it's backing up, but it's not keeping any of the backups!
I checked a few things already:
(1) The ReadyNAS's firmware has been updated. It's running RAIDiator 4.1.8 [1.00a043].
(2) The capacity of the ReadyNAS is 921 GB, of which we are only using 338 GB (36%).
(3) On the ReadyNas interface (Frontview), everything appears to be fine. The capacity for the Time Machine backup is set at 500 GB: more than the capacity of both of our hard drives combined (each of which is around 120 GB).
(4) I backed up my Time Machine backup (using Frontview) to an external hard drive, so that I can look at what's on the Time Machine share. I found two sparsebundle files, corresponding to my laptop and my husband's. When I double-click on either one of the sparsebundles, it gives me an error that says "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Time Machine Backups. You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
HOWEVER, it still mounts the disks (or his at least...read on).
(a) When I double-click on his (which the Info panel tells me is around 60 GB), it mounts a drive called "Time Machine Backups," which contains a folder that seems to have his backups for the last nine months or so.
(b) When I double-click on mine, though (which the Info panel tells me is 147 GB), it mounts a similar drive, but I can't open the folder. It has a red "minus" sign on it, and I can't seem to adjust the permissions using the Info panel (although it says that the System has "Read & Write" access).
I'm getting really frustrated with this whole thing. And the worst part it I have no idea when the problem started. I'm going to guess that it was when we upgraded to Lion (he upgraded about a month ago, and I upgraded a couple of months before that. But I honestly have no idea. I only noticed the problem a couple of weeks ago.
I'd appreciate any help I can get on this!
Thanks!
2 Replies
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- Hello,
I don't know if you need an answer 4 and a half months after but i've got one for you.
The trouble is that for magical reasons Mac OS Lion is able to write backup on the NAS but not to read them (It's magic I said :D ).
To fix the problem, you need to change read/write access on the backup directory on ReadyNas Time Machine disk.
Here's a solution :
1) Click on the little clock at the top of the screen then "Enter Time Machine"
2) Let the infinite space appears, the list of your backup is limited to a couple of hours ago (because they are just local backups, the ones on your MacBooks hard disk, a new Time Machine functionality, but backups located on the NAS are at this step unreachable so you cannot see them). Just for information local backups appears in white on the right "time bar" and backups on NAS appears in purple (when they appear and that is not the case yet if you're at this step of my solution :D )
3) Go back to the desktop and open a Finder
4) A new disk must appear at the bottom of the left menu, under your computer name
It's named "Copie de sauvegarde" in french but I think it may be "Backup copy" or "Backup disk" in english ...
5) Open it. It contains only one directory named "Backups.backupdb"
Open it, you will find one or more directory named as your computer(s) name(s)
6) Right click on the directory named as your MacBook then choose "Read information". What you have to do is give Read and Write access on this directory to user called "staff".
You will certainly need to click on the little padlock at the bottom and enter your computer password to unlock this functionality.
7) Close information window. Enter in Time Machine and let the space and time magic happens 8)
(the Magic sometimes take 10 or 20 seconds to happen ...)
I hope that will help you ! (or at least one person on the Internet :D ) - Hey, that fixed the problem for me! One thing that differed from your instructions is that I had to grant access to group "admin" (Administrators), not "staff" --- no option was presented for "staff" in the add-permissions dialog. Possibly that's a localization difference between English and French systems.
Also worth noting is the point that it takes a few seconds for the back versions to appear after you enter the Time Machine display. I first thought this hadn't fixed it, but I just didn't have enough patience ...
Thanks so much!
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