{"id":3675,"date":"2010-07-23T11:42:06","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T15:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/?p=3675"},"modified":"2010-07-23T11:42:06","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T15:42:06","slug":"verifing-time-machine-backups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/verifing-time-machine-backups\/","title":{"rendered":"Verifing Time Machine Backups?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Time Machine is very boolean in it&#8217;s operation. \u00c2\u00a0It either was successful or failed. \u00c2\u00a0So if there is a single file that it can&#8217;t backup, it aborts it&#8217;s current backup, and shuts down until the next backup cycle. \u00c2\u00a0This isn&#8217;t exactly an optimal solution. \u00c2\u00a0Other Backup software (eg Retrospect) will log an error on a particular file, but continue with the current backup cycle, until done.<\/p>\n<p>Time Machine does not have any built-in mechanism to verify a set of backups as being valid. That&#8217;s one issue with Time Machine, being consumer orientated instead of enterprise&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Sure, you could perform a Disk Repair in Disk Utility, but that doesn&#8217;t validate the Time Machine backup data. \u00c2\u00a0That instead will verify the structure and integrity of the backup disk. (Of course, Disk Warrior verifies \/ repairs in a complementary manner).<\/p>\n<p>The only way that I see that you could verify the data in the backup is to do a full restore.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I have just learned that Time Machine claims to have a verification method, if you are using a Time Capsule. \u00c2\u00a0Option-Click on the Time Machine Menu Extra, and you will see (starting with 10.64) a option called Verify Backups. \u00c2\u00a0This Apple\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/support.apple.com\/kb\/HT4076\">Technote(HT4076)<\/a> discusses the process, and it is simply running a Disk Utility \/ Verify Disk on the Time Capsule disk image. \u00c2\u00a0This does not necessarily verify the data was accurately backed up, but verifies the integrity of the Disk Image.<\/p>\n<p>So, it doesn&#8217;t really verify your backup data&#8230; \u00c2\u00a0It&#8217;s verifying the backup file&#8217;s integrity&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>So at this point, I still have not found a reliable method to verify Time Machine Backups&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time Machine is very boolean in it&#8217;s operation. \u00c2\u00a0It either was successful or failed. \u00c2\u00a0So if there is a single file that it can&#8217;t backup, it aborts it&#8217;s current backup, and shuts down until the next backup cycle. \u00c2\u00a0This isn&#8217;t exactly an optimal solution. \u00c2\u00a0Other Backup software (eg Retrospect) will log an error on a <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/verifing-time-machine-backups\/\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[12,5,25],"tags":[141,1831,79],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The constant WPCACHEHOME must be set in the file wp-config.php and point at the WP Super Cache plugin directory. -->