As of the past couple of months, I keep getting this prompt from Time Machine that it needs to create a new backup. Has anybody encountered this before and if so what is the fix? It's a pain to have to create a fresh backup every month, plus I lose old backups.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

There's a good explanation here: http://pondini.org/TM/C13.html

 

I infrequently get these errors as well, interspersed with successful TM backups to the same share, same Mac device (LAN connected Mini saving to server grade NAS box with ECC memory, etc).  Definitely agree with the pondine web reference provided by John_M advising to delete the backup when you see this error.  Frankly I think the phase of the moon could be a culprit -- IE Time Machine is pretty fragile and basically not happy unless backing up to a directly attached drive (even the Time Capsule Apple offers is flaky trying to use Apple Wifi Routers).  I've had the LAN backup fail when there's no traffic on my network, and succeed when I'm torturing the network (and UnRAID) like crazy.  Not something that makes you sleep well at night (half the purpose of UnRAID, right?). 

 

I'll sound like a salesman shill here, and this is way more answer than you're asking for, but since I'm so happy with what I'm doing and how it blends nicely with UnRaid I'm going to blather on anyway:  For quick restore purposes, make a periodic simple clone of the Mac with something like SuperDuper, and for the Time Machine features, try Arq (Arqbackup.com).  These are both OS-X native apps, so they're stable (but Arq works with Windows too).  Both are perfectly happy to work with the apple file system and backup to UnRAID or any NAS.  Arq has all the features of Time Machine (and much more) -- deduplication, versioning, and the great and soon to be industry standard feature of encryption on device before the archive (so your UnRaid backup archives can easily/safely be pushed up to go "industrial strength" with your backup strategy -- such as to the cloud for your offsite backup strategy if you like, with easy button options for targets like Amazon S3/Glacier, Dropbox, Google Drive etc - on device encryption meaning that no cloud service has a copy of the encryption key if there's ever a major breach.  Amazon G3 is $.03/GB/Mo, Glacier is only $.007/GB/Mo and Glacier is a nickel a GB for upload (but crazy fast) - Arq happily automates the upload so you don't have to tangle with Amazon's complicated GUI's each time).  I personally feel that user possessed encryption keys should be the rule for your major data backups, and sneakermail "analog" key storage is what bank safety deposit boxes (and maybe 1Password) are for -- can't Ransomware a bank vault!!  And Glacier will have your data pulled from the catacombs by the time you get back from the bank and have a beer to celebrate the fact that you made that extra off site backup and how it just saved your bacon when the basement flooded or whatever lol. 

 

You get all this with Arq for a single price that's around $50.    Superduper has a free option if you're just making a simple drive clone, or alot more features and automation if you pay the $30 (such as incremental clones that overwrites only the changed info, so much faster).  These are both experienced open-source friendly developers with great track records in the OS-X ecosystem.  I'd give the price for both just to make half of the flakiness with time machine go away so I could trust it - turns out the answer was to make time machine go away and put my trust elsewhere, or at least relegate it to third string...  The whole purpose of a backup mechanism is to make your data backup bulletproof automated and mindless after all... 

 

Previously I used Crashplan, which definitely is flexible and does all the above (and is dockerized for UnRaid), and frankly seems similarly bulletproof and is actually very reasonable cost if you don't push backups to their cloud (IE could use it backing up to UnRaid in place of Time Machine without charge), but their interface isn't as easy to use and their cloud storage (unlimited data for the monthly fee) is still pricey for a home user, using their restore process is IMO kind of clumsy, and I think it's Java based so theoretically not quite as impenetrable (certainly not OS-X intuitive...).  BackBlaze is another similar service that's more OS-X centric.  And if you really also want an easy button option for simple hard drive recovery, you can use a simple cloner like Superduper or Paragon's new Disk Manager (Paragon also provides you improvement over Disk Manager for formatting etc. and also gives the ability to read/write NTFS and EXT Windows/Linux drive partitions using OS-X, overcoming another Mac silo problem inside a mixed network).  My point being, if you go to the trouble of building a nice UnRaid NAS, you might consider expanding your horizon to look at something that plays nice with it so you don't have to fight Time Machine, which is in best circumstances is kind of a love/hate relationship...  I think the new Apple File system is just another variable to throw in there - will Time Machine have growing pains with that too?

 

I now use Time Machine as a redundant process - IE plug in an external drive to the MAC periodically to make an episodic "cold" copy (weekly or monthly, etc) then keep the drive in an off grid safe place in your house which is also a hedge against data loss in case of Ransomware, or in case of theft of your Mac (and NAS) -- if you hide the drive well.  Where Time Machine does shine is that it's a really simple restore option from a damaged OS install - IE can restore it from the rescue partition of the Mac.  Having a slightly old backup also injects a low tech protection against Ransomware or a Router/Firewall malware penetration where you don't trust anything on your network anymore - situation that forces a Nuke N Pave response, etc. - or a response to crooks simply absconding with your entire physical network, which could be keeping an OS-X install USB stick with the drive, so all you need is a trip to Best Buy or Apple Store to be back in Biz even in a catastrophe).  That external drive is also a good place to keep an archive of things like your 1Password backup and other things you might need (or could grab and go with in a natural disaster scenario), keeping that in a simple encrypted folder on the drive.  Make it an SSD if you can afford it and now it's got long term archival durability potential as well.  I think one other thought in Nuke N Pave scenario is I don't think Time Machine keeps some of the settings (App activation ID #'s and the like) if I am recalling that right, complicating the restore process and there's probably your $80 back right there for software activation keys you can't find for purchased Mac software add ons.... 

 

Since it's a short thread I thought the extra detail might be a useful posting for folks interacting with Time Machine with UnRaid, esp. those new to UnRaid / NAS.  Esp. with Limetech's strategy to get a more novice level of users drawn into the UnRaid ecosystem...

 

Joe

 

 

I use Time Machine on all my Macs but I only use it with directly attached hard disks that are dedicated to the purpose, one per computer. It seems that the sparsebundle disk images, that are used on network-based Time Machine destinations, are especially fragile. I have used a WD MyCloud NAS for the purpose in the past but abandoned it for this reason. It isn't an unRAID problem but a Time Machine one.

Thank you for the quick replies!

 

I tried following the prompt one more time letting Time Machine delete the old backups and create the new and then after it finished, I decided to run a manual verification and it gave me the same error message. As verification runs once a month (I believe), I think that is why it is backing up fine in between and then when it is time to verify, it fails.

 

I looked at the Pondini article and since it failed after the manual verification, I decided to delete the sparse bundle manually, unselect the backup disc from Time Machine and set it up again. It is currently backing up so after it is done I will try another manual verification to see if this fixed the issue.

 

Hopefully, this works. It started giving me this error after I replaced the motherboard on the unRaid so maybe that messed up something for Time Machine.

 

I will report back with what I find.

So far so good. I did a manual verification and it passed. Let's see how long it lasts.

 

Thanks again for all the help!