I’ve already whined about the Apple Time Capsule we bought earlier this year; it’s a rare instance of an Apple Product that Just Doesn’t Work. There are two problems: First, if I get online while Lauren is, this locks up her WhiteBook so badly she has to reboot; we can’t share WiFi. Second, I have to run the Time Machine backups by hand and I also have to connect by wire for big ones, because the default setup leaves my BlackBook in an endless “Preparing Backup” cycle. So I went and bought another WiFi router for $99, and now at least we can both be on the Net. I’d advise caution with the Time Capsule product until Apple’s done a couple more releases of the hardware and OS X too. Pfui.
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Drew (Dec 09 2008, at 12:38)
I've had some issues with wireless backups timing out after I don't open the laptop at home for a few days (ie a ton of work has piled up).
Is your wife's machine in the midst of a backup when this happens? What do the logs on her machine say right before crash time?
I have a similar rig at home (wife w/macbook me w/macbookpro connecting through a small time capsule) and don't want to get bitten by the same bug.
Are either of you using File Vault?
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From: Adrian Sutton (Dec 09 2008, at 12:41)
That's odd, I've recently bought a Time Capsule as well and have been delighted with it. The wireless works better than the ADSL modem does and backups are completely seamless now for both my wife and I and at the same time.
Shows you just can't test for every situation...
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From: Tom Koschate (Dec 09 2008, at 13:20)
I've got three Macs happily backing up to my Time Machine (1TB model) wirelessly. One thing you need to make sure of is that you shouldn't be allowing any virtual machine images to be backed up via time machine. If you use a VM, all of its files are marked dirty, so you're easily trying to copy 10GB or more of files.
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From: Takashi Shitamichi (Dec 09 2008, at 15:07)
I have the same problem as Tim. So, my wife's VISTA needs to connect another wifi point of 11g. A couple of my Mac can connect to 1TB Time Cupsule and do backup, but sometimes one of them occupies the Cupsule, so that another Mac needs to connect to 11g by hands.
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From: Dallas Hockley (Dec 09 2008, at 15:44)
I also have multiple macs (wired and wireless) backing up and sharing network on a 1TB time capsule. I noticed more issues before the wireless and firmware updates over the past year. Without the updates there were a few issues with things though, especially with the single file "sparse disk image" backup. No problems since. Any chance for an exchange to see if you got some bad luck in the wireless chipset?
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From: Ron Bischof (Dec 09 2008, at 17:53)
If you're by any chance using Intego VirusBarrier X5, disabling the real time scanning function solved the endless preparing backup loop and/or subsequent failure for me.
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From: jon (Dec 10 2008, at 18:35)
Buy a Drobo/DroboShare instead and use BackMyFruitUp to back it up.
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From: Mike Klassen (Dec 15 2008, at 07:27)
After I got an Airport Extreme wireless-N, I tried out the Bonjour service and hooked up an enlosed hard drive. Never could get it to work right, the drive was spinning 24/7, and finally gave up trying to have a wireless network backup drive.
Time Machine frustrated me recently when I ended up filling up the backup drive to capacity. I read online that TM automatically would provide a choice to delete the "oldest" backups. It doesn't. Surprisingly, when I contacted Apple the phone support person was unaware how to delete old backups so he put me on hold for a while, then came back with an answer.
I had to navigate onto the drive and delete the old backup manually in order to allow room to backup. If this had been critical data for me it would have been a big pain to deal with.
While Time Machine is very simple, I think it's interface is possibly too simple. I look forward to an update of this tool.
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From: Bill Seitz (Dec 19 2008, at 04:05)
I have similar issues, not with the backups, but with the net-dropping. The light on the TimeCapsule starts blinking and everyone loses net access.
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2008-10-28-TimeCapsuleFlakiness
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From: Guybrush (Dec 19 2008, at 05:26)
Hm. Funny- I never had the slightest problem with time machine, except a sometimes patience-requiring preparation phase. More than that, it has already proven very useful by restoring an essay that would otherwise have been lost.
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