Time Machine backup via OSX Mavericks

[Caddystash]

MBL newbie upgrading from Lion to Mavericks on a 2011 MacBook Air. 

I started with a fast full TimeMachine backup to the MBL drive under Lion prior to OS X upgrade and I followed Western Digital’s warning to uninstall ‘WD SmartWare’ with ‘the WD software uninstaller’ app which WD directed me to on a ‘My Book Studio LX’ webpage, saying one size fits all (I note that the MBL webpage only had a My Cloud uninstaller for Mac, and as Western Digital made no mention of this, I left that well alone). 

After uninstalling ‘WD SmartWare’ I upgraded to Mavericks. Everything seemed okay at first but, the TimeMachine backup was far slower than before, so I left it in progress as I went to bed, ensuring that the laptop would not go to sleep, apart from the screen. Come the morning I see it had not completed and when I tried to manually do a TimeMachine backup it told me “The Backup disk could not be found”. 

It’s was there in the finder, however, in fact there was now three Time Machine Volumes. There is a generic white drive icon named “TimeMachine Backups” note the ’s’ at the end of the name. Then there are the two blue WD drive icons named “TimeMachine” and “TimeMachinBackup”. 

Opening a finder window, I now see “TimeMachine Backups” comes up under DEVICES, whereas I recall that before the upgrade the two WD drive icons appeared here instead. Anyhow, when I clicked on the generic “TimeMachine Backups” icon the finder window crashed, and when I reopened the finder window the “TimeMachine Backups” drive icon had disappeared altogether. Ten minuets later, a message window appeared on the screen saying that the two WD volumes had also been dropped. Yet in the finder window under SHARED the ‘mybooklive’  still shows up as a computer and clicking on it brings up all 4 Shares folders ‘Public’, ‘SmartWare’, ‘TimeMachine’ and ‘TimeMachineBackup’.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me there is some kind of clash between the generic “TimeMachine Backups” volume which Mavericks expects and the WD specific “TimeMachine” and “TimeMachineBackup” volumes. I have read on another thread here that there should only be one WD TimeMachine volume showing in the finder window, but due to a quirk of OS X, two volumes appear. I haven’t reinstalled SmartWare yet, and I notice that the My Cloud uninstall icon had been removed from my Launchpad by the Mavericks upgrade.

I hope my experience adds to the discussion.

[Caddystash]

Update

Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser, 

I just uploaded a test image from my phone via its WD2go app. which showed the drive and Shares were all working fine, and then I tried to retrieve it on my MacBook. But this time clicking in a finder window upon the ‘mybooklive’ computer icon under SHARED only brought up a empty window with the ‘Connected as: Guest’ line along the top. The Shares folders were no longer shown beneath it as usual nor visible in any of the other views either. Then the ‘mybooklive’ icon disappeared from the finder window, together with the SHARED heading.

So, bit by bit, the whole drive connection, first the two TimeMachine backup links and now the links to all of the folders had fallen over and then vanished.

I did a computer restart and nothing showed up for ten minuets and then ‘mybooklive’ appeared once more under SHARED. Clicking on it this time brought up all the Shares folders allowing me to open the phone-uploaded image directly from the ‘Public’ sub-folder, ‘Shared Pictures’ just fine.

Trying to use TimeMachine itself, unsurprisingly, just calls up blank pages. It’s all still there though, I can see it on my smartphone, it’s just invisible to Mavericks.

So nothing catastrophic has happened (yet), it just seems Mavericks’ finder keeps loosing track of the MBL peripheral and its sub-volumes.

[swhoyle]

If anyone has any advice

I have a My Book Live and TM trickles data through at a whopping 1KB where as my normal Mybook via USB rattles through at 15 - 30 MB/s 

The MB Live is almost unuseable for TM now and I cant speed it up - it did the initial back up okay bit now its hopeless - Ive no idea if this is related to Mavericks or not.

MBP 2011 is connected to a GB Switch as is the MB Live - I can transfer data between the two devices at over 60 MB/s … just not TM data 

Thanks 

[whsbuss]

swhoyle wrote:

If anyone has any advice

 

I have a My Book Live and TM trickles data through at a whopping 1KB where as my normal Mybook via USB rattles through at 15 - 30 MB/s 

 

The MB Live is almost unuseable for TM now and I cant speed it up - it did the initial back up okay bit now its hopeless - Ive no idea if this is related to Mavericks or not.

 

MBP 2011 is connected to a GB Switch as is the MB Live - I can transfer data between the two devices at over 60 MB/s … just not TM data 

 

Thanks 

I’m not sure why everyone is having TM issues. Since my update to Mavericks I’ve had no problems even wirelessly.

[alaz0]

Through several forums here and at Apple, there seem to be two issues that ar bubbling to the top:

There is a major issue with those haveing Norton Anti-Virus running on Mavericks, pecifically running “Idle-time scan”.  One indicator is that you hear your system hard drive running and seeking all the time.  If you have this installed, turn off “Idle-time scan”, wait until the hard disk quiets down (it may be a while until the current scan ends).  Then try Time Machine.  You might want to try turning off the “Virus Protection” and “Vulnerability Protection” and see if that improves things.  In myh case, tunring “Idle-time scan” made the biggest difference; the other two don’t make much or any difference, so I leave the two “… Protections” running.

Spotlight under Mavericks can also cause significant problems.  The issue here is that Spotlight “indexes” (i.e., creates its own database of your files) your hard drives, making subsequent searches much faster.  But, similar to the Norton issue above, it takes over your hard drive, resulting in long wait times.  I believe that the delay problems are only caused when Spotlight is creating the indexThe solution here is to go to System Prefernces → Spotlight → Privacy.  This lists the drives and folders that are NOT incluced in Sporlight.  The general recommendation is to put all external drives that you don’t normally search (e.g., backup drives) on this list; the more on this list, the better the performance (apparently).  To select a drive, hit the + button near the lower left, select a drive or folder.  It’s possible (I don’t know as fact) that Spotlight can get stuck indexing and re-indexing your main hard drive.  

In case Spotlight on your main drive is corrupted or troublesome, re-index that drive.  Apple doesn’t make this obvious…  Open Spotlight Privacy (as shown above).  Hit the + button, select your main system hard drive and add it to the list excluded drives.  Once it’s on the list, select your main drive again and press the - button on the lower left.  That will remove your main system drive from the list.  Spotlight will now re-index your main system drive.  Then, most important, leave Time Machine off until your maind hard drive stops making noise.  Then turn on Time Machine.

On my system, I run Parallells and have Windows and Linux as applications under MacOS.  I excluded the Parallels  folder in my Documents folder (which is where Parellels, for some unknown reason, keeps alternate OS images).  

Nope, not done yet, but real close.  :-)  The next step is the hardest!  :-)  Patience.

At each of the above steps, WAIT until it’s finished.  Whether it takes minutes or hours, really wait until it’s done.

If you are reading this, then you’ve been messing with Time Machine for some time.  The consequence is that Time Machine is a mess – but it’s NOT a problem.  Time Machine will fix itself - really!  When you turn on Time Machine, it will take one or two Time Machine cycles to clean up the mess.  That may take minutes or hours – the longer you’ve been putting up with this, the more of a mess it is (sorry).  

There are reports that these fixes don’t do it for some users, but it seems to work for many, if not most users.  It did work for me.  Patience was the hardest part…

Finally, Western Digital recommended removing Smart Drive; I did.  In checking their sites, some newere drives already have new firmware for drives (and presumable a new Smart Drive?).  But not for my drive yet.  Their tech support promised that they will catch up.  I’m waiting for their Mavericks updates to finish this long headache…

Good Luck!

[alaz0]

Forgot one more thing:

Before you turn on Time Machine, use Finder to check your Time Machine drive.  If your last (most recent) backup file has “…InProgress” at the end of it’s name.  MAKE SURE that Time Machine is off in System Preferences, then delete or move to trash the file that include “…InProgrss”, and only that file.  This will not damage any other Time Machine backup.  Then, many have repoted that clearing the Time Machine file list (e.g., its own database of files, I think).  To do this:

Go to Finder, select your computer name (not your user name, you want to get at the system files).  Then, Select Library → Prefrences.  There is a file called “com.apple.TimeMachine.plist”  Move that to trash (if you’re nervous about this, you can recover that file from Trash).  When you start Time Machine, it will recreate a new version of that file, and will build a new file list.  That has helped many users.

I believe that real programmers call all fo this “Plug and Pray”…

Combine these last two posts – chances are good that this headache will turn to history.

[Caddystash]

Thanks for your very detailed suggestions alaz0. None of them directly apply to me, unfortunately. 

However, I have made progress. I have found that by rebooting my MacBook Air and then waiting, and waiting, taking care to ensuring that the computer doesn’t go to sleep, after around 10 minutes, for no apparent reason, the “ mybookllive ” computer icon appears in the Finder window (Command N), down the left hand Sidebar under the heading SHARED. 

After this happens, clicking on the TimeMachine Menuett at the top of the laptop screen bringing up the “ Browse other backup disks… ”menu option now displays the icon ‘ “(name)’s MacBook Air” on “TimeMachine Backups” ‘. Note that plural “ s “ at the end of the title again. When I select this, TimeMachine starts up and all of my pre-Mavericks TimeMachine backups are visible to me and accessible. 

So progress of sorts, but I still cannot find a way to get TimeMachine preferences to do any new backups within Mavericks itself, due to TimeMachine’s inability to acknoledge the WD pre-designated MBL TimeMachine volume. It appeared above the “ Other TimeCapsule ” icon, but was not recognised. When I deselected the Timemachine drive icon, I could not get it to reapear afterwards.

BTW After a further 10 minuets, or so, the “ Time Machine Backups ” white hard drive icon even appears in the Finder Sidebar under the heading DEVICES. Again, for no apparent reason. Clicking on it brings up the folder “ Backups.backupdb ” and clicking on this brings up “(name)’s MacBook Air” icon and selecting this brings up a list of TimeMachine Backups. This method alone has allowed me to remove the last of the list entries ending “… InProgress ” as suggested by alaz0 above. I have also removed " com.apple.TimeMachine.plist" again as suggested, but still no joy.

[Caddystash]

I have decided that for now I am going to sit tight until WD come up with a solution. At least I can get at older TimeMachine backups if I need to, and I do not want to risk reinstalling WD SmartWare, just in case a reformat of my MBL results. 

I assume that the slow mounting of the router-linked hard drive is either something to do with WD SmartWare not being installed or OS X Mavericks speed improvements meaning previous system cycle wasting background operations have been downgraded to the point of being virtually unusable.

[Maplewood]

Hello Is there a resolution to this problem ??? I am stuck with my MAC Book Pro running current version of Mavericks, Not able to connect to MBL says (error OSStatus 2)… I can see MBL in the finedr on the left hand side of my MAC Book … but time machine is not able to connect to MBL as the Back up disk…

[Qtip31]

I just purchased a new Macbook pro retina running Mavericks.  Time Machine backup via MyWorldBook II NAS drive was working fine until about a week ago.  Since then, I get the “there was a problem connecting to the server mybooklive-backup” issue.  I have restored my drive to factory setting (deleting all of my previous backups) and still it does not work.  I can see the drive in finder connect both as admin and as wd_backup.  I can copy and paste files to the drive.  I see from this thread a patch or firmware update is needed…has this been made available?  HELP.  If not, please keep me approsed of when it is!

[alaz0]

This is a very frustratihg problem.  Others, like myself, have come up with “solutions” that aren’t.  The common threads are Mavericks, Time Machine, some disk drives (i.e., Western Digital, Lacie – so far), Spotlight (in Mavericks), and Norton Anti-Virus.  There doesn’t seem to be a common thread to all, except Mavericks and Time Machine.  Clearly, if it’s a software bug or bugs, we, the users, can’t fix those.

For Western Digital, the last word, some time ago, was to remove WD Disk Manager and wait.  Some of the newer WD drives have firmware updates that are listed as including Mavericks; most WD drives don’t.  

I wish that we, the users, would get more feedback from Apple and Western Digital.  Evan a “we’re still working on it” would be of enormous help…

Still trying, and waiting, for the solution.

[Caddystash]

I have now sent my MBL back to Amazon on 30 Day sale or return, due to me being unable to remotely access the drive from my laptop because of another Mac related problem, this time involving WD2Go and the latest version of Java. I am not put off the concept of the MBL, however, and may even buy a WD My Cloud when both of these problems are addressed.

Before I sent it back though, I came across one final Mavericks temporary work-around which could save you some time. After a restart of the computer, it usually took me around ten minutes before my router and 'mybooklive’ showed up under SHARED in the finder window’s side bar. Afterwards it was a little hit-and-miss if the ‘TimeMachine’ and ‘TimeMachineBackup’ volumes would ever appear above it in the side bar, headed DEVICES: and even if they did, it would take another ten minutes. 

I found a quicker way to mount them. click on 'mybooklive’ and then open the ‘TimeMachine’ folder and double-click the “ (Your Name) ’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle” icon. Although this doesn’t seem to do anything at first, if you look at your MBL’s hard drive, it’s light turns from blue to green and you will see on your computer screen that the two missing volumes appear instantly under DEVICES. This then allows you to restore them from the TimeMacine applet menu in the way I mentioned above in an earlier post.

Good Luck.

[Sean_tiburon]

I have figured out how to make my WD MyBook World (With White Light) work with Mavericks.

1. Open your finder

2: Locate your MBW on the sidebar on the left

3: Click on “MyBookWorld” _ NOT _ “MyBookWorld-Backup”

4: Before your computer connects, click on “Connect As” at the top right of the window

5: A login window opens.  Login as the backup user.  For me the login is, “wd_backup” and the password is “backup”

6: My computer takes about 10 seconds to connect, then my finder looks like this:

7: Click on the folder, “wd-backup” to mount it to your computer.

8:  Open Time Machine Peferences and click, “wd_backup” then click, “Use Disk”

9: Go get a latte, it’s going to take a while.

[checik]

Thanks, it works for me as well!

[alaz0]

I just got back to looking at this thread.  If you have not solved this problem, try this:

Find out what the IP address is for your NAS drive.  I set mine to a static address, so that it’s always the same.  If you need help with this, let me know, and I’ll give more info.  But in short, if you can log into your router, look under your networks tab and peruse – you should be able to find it.

Finder → Go → Connect to server.  In the type-in box, put in afp:// IP address, if that does not fix it, put in smb://IP address.  So, if your NAS IP address is 192.168.1.100 (example), the you type in afp://192.168.1.100 in the box.  Then press Connect.  That should restart your connection.

AFP is Apple File Protocol – it is Apple’s version of file management over the network.  SMB is Server Message Block – it is Microsoft’s file managment over the network.  They both work for me.  SMB is more common among various Linux, Unix, Windows systems, and works with Apple.  I’ve read in blogs that Apple may be moving to SMB over AFP, but I don’t know that for a fact.  I suggest trying both for your NAS, one may work faster than the other, and may depend on the firmware in your NAS.

Good Luck!  Get back if you still have problems.

[CharlieV]

This worked for me as well! Now, last night when I called WD support, they had no clue how to help me. Go figure.

Thanks Sean, great job!

[Righeaon]

Since I upgraded to Mavericks, I can no longer see my MBL in the OS X Finder.  However, it’s readily visible in my router panel, and with the IP adress from there I can ping and traceroute it (latter method then allows it to identify itself as:> - ’ 1  mybooklive (192.168.1.170)  0.743 ms  0.206 ms  0.192 ms’. 
I can see the drive on my networked TV (N600 wireless), and browse to and play video files from it.  However, from the internet side, the mycloud login wd2go gives a yellow triangle error with the rollover text of:> - “Device is offline.  Check your internet connection, enable remote access and then try again”
I saw lots of complaints on the web, some with no OS X visibility at all like me, others with connectivity but no functionality.  My router has the latest firmware, but not sure about the MBL, and I can’t load it anyway (or at least, not without fancy hacks).> So, I tried your connection suggestions above.

Find out what the IP address is for your NAS drive.  I’m not using static, but found mine in my router panel - 192.168.1.170

Finder → Go → Connect to server.  Tried both SMB:// and  afp:// IP address, and SMB:// and afp://mybooklive but got the following errors for SMB:

…and afp:

 … with similar errors if I use “mybooklive”. 

I’ve tried rebooting my drive and iMac and MacBookPro, all to no avail.  What’s flummoxed me is that I seem to be able to do almost everything except connect from a Mac. 

Apple says SMB is the default in Mavericks, but afp should work too.

Setup:

• iMac 21.5" Late 2009
• Router Asus RT-N56U
• Gigabit Ethernet connection both ways.

---

[the72windsurfer]

That’s great; thank you so much. The connection has been established; I am very grateful. 

I do have another question though; now in Finder I have the 192… IP address, the My book world and My book world back up ( i use it as a time capsule) and i cant connect to these drives. Any suggestions? I would be happy to just delete the whole disk and start a new with another back up.

Many thanks once more