OS X (El Capitan) 10.11.3 seems to have broken Time Capsule functionality

[Sas]

Several months ago I attached a portable drive (seagate backup plus) to my Asus ac68u, and used the Time Machine functionality under USB Application to mount the drive on the network and start to use it as a Time Machine (Capsule) backup. It was working flawlessly until Apple's recent update of OS X (El Capitan) to version 10.11.3, and since then, the system reports the backups as corrupted and throws them away every time I make a backup. I have tried using a different drive and different firmware versions, but it is always the same problem. Apple broke something (either by accident or intentionally). I have reported this on Apple's forums as well, but since they refuse to support 3rd party Time Capsule functionality in any way, I don't hold out much hope there and wanted to at least report it here in the hopes that it is fixable on the firmware or settings end. Anyone else experiencing this?

 

[sfx2000]

yep - on QNAP's QTS 4.2.0, same problem during testing..

Use the USB drive directly attached, and you'll be fine...

 

[Sas]

I assume by "Use the USB drive directly attached" you mean to my Mac, not the router (which was previously the case). That is what I have sadly had to do, and it is backing up locally now. I was really enjoying my network backups before Apple broke it...

 

[sfx2000]

I assume by "Use the USB drive directly attached" you mean to my Mac, not the router (which was previously the case). That is what I have sadly had to do, and it is backing up locally now. I was really enjoying my network backups before Apple broke it...

Apple didn't really break it, as they never supported network backup outside of their platforms (TimeCapsule, OS X Server) in the first place... notice that there is little to no formal documentation about how it works...

"TimeMachine Support" was reverse engineered and propagated across many vendors...

 

[highwire]

yep - on QNAP's QTS 4.2.0, same problem during testing..

Use the USB drive directly attached, and you'll be fine...

I have a few Macs running 10.11.3 and a QNAP TS-219P II with QTS 4.2.0 and all my TM backups are working fine.

 

[sfx2000]

I have a few Macs running 10.11.3 and a QNAP TS-219P II with QTS 4.2.0 and all my TM backups are working fine.

Are you certain that they're good? That's part of the big problem with 3rd party solutions - what I've found is that many work ok, until a month or so down the line, when Time Machine starts coalescing the monthly snapshots - so when an OS update comes out and changes thousands of files, that is a lot of read/write/changes to the sparse bundle - it's ok at first...

And then it fails...

 

[highwire]

Are you certain that they're good? That's part of the big problem with 3rd party solutions - what I've found is that many work ok, until a month or so down the line, when Time Machine starts coalescing the monthly snapshots - so when an OS update comes out and changes thousands of files, that is a lot of read/write/changes to the sparse bundle - it's ok at first...

And then it fails...

I did a 'verify backup' and while it took some time, it passed. Seems like everything is OK. I had done a restore from the QNAP just after 10.11.0 was released, and it worked OK then too.

 

[SnakeByte]

I had a similar issue with our QNAP. Only one of three macs had this trouble though. I got the error twice on that machine but have since not had any trouble.

 

[sfx2000]

FWIW - even on Apple's TimeCapsule, backups sometimes go wrong - if you get a "verify" prompt from your Mac, things have gone wrong... I think a lot of it goes to the client doing the push, rather that the server doing a pull - and there doesn't seem to be a lot of error checking during the backup session..

TimeMachine is interesting - but keep alternate backups - CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper images are a very good idea - and then you can backup those images...

 

[Markmaster]

Is there any workflow to bypass this issue and start to backup again with my Asus router?

 

[unknownUser]

From experience (bad one) I recommend when using a WIFI time machine backup, to only use the Time Capsule for that!
My theory is, that Apple has integrated a script that checks the integrity of the backup in the Time Capsule as a lot of fails can happen while doing WIFI backup. It checks than the files and fixes those, there is an option that flags the backup as defective, if it hits the count of two it is set to broken. You can use scripts ans stuff to rescan it manually and reset the count, but I don't recommend doing this! So far I know, except the original TC from Apple, no other hardware does that check & fix!

 

[sfx2000]

timemachine - OSX Server, TimeCapsule, direct attached storage formatted as HFS+

Anything else working with that backup solution likely isn't one - even going into the SparseBundle and trying to fix it - nothing but pain...

SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner - much better...