Time Machine is spinning my disks up


Recommended Posts

Hello,

after Time Machine finally finished uploading to my TM user share (i think it took me 5 days to upload 200-ish GB, the transfer speed was absolutely horrible and it was constantly breaking up) I noticed that disk2 where the TM share is located and parity will spin up from time to time. I fired up ifnotify and here is what i got:

 

Watches established.
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/ OPEN,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ ACCESS Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/ OPEN,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ ACCESS Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/ OPEN,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ ACCESS Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/ OPEN,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR TM
/mnt/disk2/TM/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ ACCESS Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE Info.plist
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ OPEN,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ OPEN,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR bands
/mnt/disk2/TM/Macintosh.sparsebundle/bands/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR 
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ OPEN .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ ACCESS .Parent
/mnt/disk2/TM/.AppleDouble/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE .Parent

 

It seems something is accessing Time Machine. Obvious answer would be, well, Time Machine, but it is turned off - hourly backups are overkill for me, so I manually backup once every day or two. If the TM is turned off - can it still access the shares? If not - what else could case this?

 

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

Any solution to this? I finally got time machine running a few days ago and the disk with TM on it hasn't stopped spinning.  It's always up.  Not much happens (from reading the read and write count increases) but it's never allowed to sleep either.

 

Is this a common issue? Where TM always fiddles with the drive?

 

Are people not having the same issue?

 

Thanks!

Link to comment

Sometimes it helps to reboot your mac to make it stop using the array disk. If that doesnt help, i once even completely threw away the TM share on unraid, and re-configured everything again from scratch on both unraid and mac, and even now, every time my mac makes an automatic backup (every saturday at 7:00) i manually check if the disks spin down after TM is done. Must say, after i reconfiguerd everything, it seems to work ok... but for how long? TM is crap if you ask me.

Link to comment

When i first set up TM and unraid 2 years ago, it worked like a charm, for months. But suddenly it kept the disk spinning up for some reason. A reboot usually fixed it, after that it worked ok for monts again. Up to a point it kept the disk spinning up again, i believe it was after upgrading to unraid 5.04 (with the change in unraid-smb/afp) there was no way i could spin the disks down, not even after rebooting. I even considered just giving up onTM. If i went into TM and removed the disk, it spun down finally, but after re-selecting it in TM, it immediatly spun up again. Not even after a backup, just configuring it made it spin... i finally remove the disk from TM, even deleted the unraid share, re-created the share on unraid, rebooted mac, re-configured TM and now all is ok... but i lost over 2 years of backup in the process.

 

By the way, i'm using 'TimeMachineEditor' to make scheduled backups on a weekly basis, not TM's standard 1 hourly backup. If you backup every hour, and your spin down time is less than 1 hour, your disks will never spin down ;)

 

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26704/timemachineeditor

Link to comment

Yes. I have TMEditor running every six hours.

I'm at a loss as to what could be happening.

I've seen a linux command discussed on the forums that you can use to tell which files are open/being accessed, and thereby, what's preventing spin-down...I should have book marked it. :(

 

Maybe one of the linux gurus is reading this....

 

Link to comment

I am using the inotify cmd to see what is causing it, it is just TM reading the sparsebundle files on the disk every second... if you reboot, it stops, only to start again after the next backup, if your unlucky...

Isn't that odd!

 

What version of OS X?

Two links that come to mind for TM help:

http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machine-sparsebundle-nas-based-backup-errors.html

http://alandix.com/blog/2010/07/09/time-machine-when-it-goes-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/

Link to comment

Latest osx, mavericks at the moment. TM never reported any errors or anything, backup proces itself is ok, it just kept on entering the disk afterwards keeping the disk spinned up forever.

 

Anyway, for me it is working again... fingers crossed.

Link to comment
  • 3 months later...

Is it still working for you?

 

I have the problem doing a TM Backup onto my Cache Disk it will never spin down. When i look into the active streams unter Dynamix i see that there are many active streams for the small sparse bundle files althought my Mac is sleeping, causing the disk not to stop spinning. If i halt the streams manually sleep works fine again. 

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.