Apple Time Machine

I have a 2008 1 TByte Apple Time Machine (TC), and granted it's old, but it's still running, besides the fact I have the two 2006 original PPC HD's also running in an external box doing backups, one a clone of the HD and the other a sync copy of my user directory.

Over the years Apple has revised the both the firmware on the TC and the software doing the TC backup in the system preferences from the original OS-X 10.5 to the latest 10.8.2. I have to say that the latest versions of it sucks.

Yeah, really sucks. For several reasons.

First, you can't actually run diagnostics on the Hard Drive (HD) itself since it's bundle within its own firmware. This means the disk utility can only check the sparsebundle file but not the actual HD, and there's no third party software that can even see it, let alone test or check it.

But you can, as I learned, take it to an Apple store, and yes, they have the software to test the HD in the TC itself. Why don't they make it available or include it in the TC package escapes, but that sucks. It's their "Ninner, ninner, ninner..." thing.

What I hate more is the backup software through the system preferences. The previous version under OS-X 10.8.1 worked fine and the TC hummed away and the sofware did its job, unnoticed. The backup software under 10.8.2 doesn't work continuously.

It works fine for about a week taking 3-5 minutes to do the hourly backup. Then for no reason it decides to make a new complete copy so it doesn't stop, for hours on end, eating the HD space for a whole second copy of whatevery you set it to copy.

I'm only copy the main HD but it takes 17 hours to do a complete copy. I have erased (zero'd) the TC to reset it and it makes a new copy where it works fine for another week or so before forgetting where it's at and starts to make a whole new copy.

It's clear something gets lost. I've run disk utility on the sparsebundle and even erased the .vt100.. index file on the TC where it makes a new one, and it works for another few days before going beserk and running continuously make a whole new copy of the HD.

I have other backups so I'm not dependent on the TC, I only wish Apple wouldn't make updates that breaks things. I know I should replace it with a new I'm told are faster and better (like Duh) or use another HD where I can run diagnostics on it if anything happens.

For now I'm waiting for OS-X 10.8.3 to see if they actually make it work right again, and I'll decide from there whether to get a new TC or an external HD. I just wished Apple actually provided users with better tools to troubleshoot problems and didn't break their own software.