Time Machine | Trying to complete first back up

Hi,

I have tried searching for similar threads but found nothing - do please re-direct me if I have missed the answer.

I am trying to complete my first Time Machine back-up (iMac to 3TB My Cloud).  As you’d expect, this is a big job…c.370GB to back up.  Unfortunately the process keeps stopping.  I assumed it would just pick up where it left off any time it cut out, but the 20GB or so that had completed when I went to bed last night does not appear to have been backed up, and now I’m back at zero.  Forgive the n00b question: I’m connected wirelessly…is it as simple as connecting to the device with an ethernet cable for the first back-up, to ensure a consistent connection?

Many thanks,

N

Hey Nick,

So I can tell you that i’ve had nothing but problems with Time Machine back up.

I’ve had my drive for almost 2 months now and have yet to succesfully backup completly over wifi.

The other day I bought a Thunderbolt to Ethernet and directly connect… and it did 9 gigs in 10 hours… which is insanly slow. At that rate im looking at a full backup in a month. :slight_smile:

There’s a few trouble shooting ideas online about slow time machine backups in general. Not related to any one drive.

They suggest doing a check disk to make sure the disk is good. Also to rebuild your spotlight database (just google it) and to reboot in safe mode (google it, so lazy hehe) then try backing up.

I’ve also seen where you can start a backup over wifi when it says “preparing backup” stop it… then connect it directly with ethernet and tell it to back up again. This allows you to backup faster and then when you disconnect and it’s now accessible over wifi it will backup automatically with no drama.

I’ll keep posting as I try some of these ideas, but I feel your pain. :confused:

I gave up on TimeMachine.  I could get it to run a first backup, then a week later it would verify the database and as a result do a first backup again, this happened three weeks in a row.  Trying to use CCC now.

hlcno, SuperDuper,

Thank you both for your responses.  It sounds like Time Machine is a lost cause, at least for now, which is frustrating.  I managed the amazing transfer speed of something like 5kb in 30 minutes on a wired connection the other day, which is just absurd.

I guess I’ll have to try a more manual approach… this seems absolutely ridiculous though - I’m really disappointed, and feel like I’ve wasted my money!

One day…

Thanks again,

N

Hmm yah seem like a lot of people are having problems.

Are any WD Mod’s reading this?

Just wondering if this is something that’s on the slate to be addressed? I’m confident they are working on it but who knows.

And I’m sure everyone here is willing to give any info they need to help resolve it.

Just an update on Time Machine backups. 

A full backup never works. Especially if you have 300+ gigs to back up on it’s initial run. This is what i did to actually get a sucessful backup.

With a brand new share just for time machine, reboot  Mycloud after creating it sucessfully. 

Reboot computer hold down option and go into recovery mode. Run Disk utility and verify permission, scan drives for problems repair etc.

All this is just to make sure there’s no issues in general with the drive.

Once you boot back up. Go to Time Machine, options and exclude everything from your user except someting small, like Documents. Select the drive and start backing up.

This will allow for a simple small initial back up. Once complete slowly add more folders. The more it’s just data then Applications (especially ones that you run a lot) the better. It seems to move pretty quick with just data no running applications.

And that’s it. Slowly add more folders as you go until your entire drive is backing up.

Hopefully this helps. It’s been a struggle but this seems to be working out SO FAR :slight_smile: