Howdy all. I am having a nuisance issue that I'm hoping someone can help me solve.
I am using the Time Machine backup functionality of the ReadyNAS to backup my MacBook Air and in the past seven days it has "failed to validate" twice prompting me to create an entirely new backup.
What are the troubleshooting steps for "it worked yesterday, it doesn't work today" with the ReadyNAS and the Time Machine functionality?
Model: RN31200|ReadyNAS 300 Series 2- Bay (Diskless)
I've run into this myself once or twice. I suspect that a change in Catalina (macOS 10.15) is causing this, as it renamed the backup file and the ReadyNAS isn't seeing the new file properly.
If you're comfortable with deleting your current backups, I would disable all Time Machine services on the NAS to clear them out, give it a bit to erase the data, and then re-create the Time Machine setup. Do NOT do this if you want to keep your old backups! In my case, I have an external backup drive that has all my data on it, so I was able to clear and re-create the Time Machine accounts, and it began working again. Re-building the backup space allowed my Macs to back up again.
If you want to get more in-depth, you can enable SSH and log into your ReadyNAS that way. The backups are located in /data/.timemachine - from there, you can do an ls -l and see the files, and potentially delete them manually. Again, do not do this if you want to keep the backups! (From here, you can get into more advance Linux file operations, such as moving the backup, if needed.)
Thanks for the response. I haven't updated to Catalina yet (and won't since it will destroy most of the apps I use), so that's not part of the problem.
I'll see if I can delete the backups, and try again. I'm also going to purchase an external drive and use CarbonCopy to clone my HDD in addition to the TimeMachine backups so I'm protected at least once, if not twice.
I've run into this myself once or twice. I suspect that a change in Catalina (macOS 10.15) is causing this, as it renamed the backup file and the ReadyNAS isn't seeing the new file properly.
If you're comfortable with deleting your current backups, I would disable all Time Machine services on the NAS to clear them out, give it a bit to erase the data, and then re-create the Time Machine setup. Do NOT do this if you want to keep your old backups! In my case, I have an external backup drive that has all my data on it, so I was able to clear and re-create the Time Machine accounts, and it began working again. Re-building the backup space allowed my Macs to back up again.
If you want to get more in-depth, you can enable SSH and log into your ReadyNAS that way. The backups are located in /data/.timemachine - from there, you can do an ls -l and see the files, and potentially delete them manually. Again, do not do this if you want to keep the backups! (From here, you can get into more advance Linux file operations, such as moving the backup, if needed.)
