My backup problem: the thot plickens!
Jan. 1st, 2018 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI haven't been able to do much to work at diagnosing the problem since it started, at least until last night, when I did a backup swap at the observatory AND brought home the entire bag that the off-site drive is in. You see, the off-site drive lives in a gallon Ziploc that contains the power supply and a USB 3 cable - something that I had not been able to find at home! Without that cable, I hadn't been able to test anything at home. Normally I give my wife the drive to swap and she just replaces it with the one in the bag.
And that's when I had my A-HA! moment.
iMacs come with four USB 3 ports in the back. I have two iDevices to charge: my phone and my tablet, plus the backup drive, plus my scanner, plus my printer (which needs to be configured for wireless some day), plus a card reader for my photography, plus the occasional need to plug in a USB memory stick, plus etc. That's more than four devices.
You get the picture. Add to that the fact that these slots are on the back of a 27" monitor - not exactly convenient to get to. This is further exacerbated by Apple's eternal quest to make everything as thin as possible - eventually everything will have edges one molecule thin and your iPhone will be suitable for lethal hand-to-hand combat. The previous generation of iMacs had an SD card reader in the side of the monitor, which was acceptable and accessible, but this one is too thin so they moved it to the back, next to the USB ports, where it's relatively inaccessible.
So I bought a USB multiport adapter.
And now I think that's probably where the problem lies.
THAT is where the backup drive was plugged in to as the iPad has to be plugged either in to the computer itself or in to a charger - the battery requires too much current to power off of the multiport adapter. When I got back from the observatory last night with the additional hardware and realized what the real configuration was, I unplugged the iPad's cable for the external backup drive, and the initial backup and cleanup finished in less than two hours. No errors. So the problem appears to be in the multiport adapter.
And I'm OK with that - for now. If it does an occasional retry while reading a device, I don't mind. If it fails utterly, then I'll replace it with a USB 3 multiport. But until that time, I'll leave it alone.
And that's when I had my A-HA! moment.
iMacs come with four USB 3 ports in the back. I have two iDevices to charge: my phone and my tablet, plus the backup drive, plus my scanner, plus my printer (which needs to be configured for wireless some day), plus a card reader for my photography, plus the occasional need to plug in a USB memory stick, plus etc. That's more than four devices.
You get the picture. Add to that the fact that these slots are on the back of a 27" monitor - not exactly convenient to get to. This is further exacerbated by Apple's eternal quest to make everything as thin as possible - eventually everything will have edges one molecule thin and your iPhone will be suitable for lethal hand-to-hand combat. The previous generation of iMacs had an SD card reader in the side of the monitor, which was acceptable and accessible, but this one is too thin so they moved it to the back, next to the USB ports, where it's relatively inaccessible.
So I bought a USB multiport adapter.
And now I think that's probably where the problem lies.
THAT is where the backup drive was plugged in to as the iPad has to be plugged either in to the computer itself or in to a charger - the battery requires too much current to power off of the multiport adapter. When I got back from the observatory last night with the additional hardware and realized what the real configuration was, I unplugged the iPad's cable for the external backup drive, and the initial backup and cleanup finished in less than two hours. No errors. So the problem appears to be in the multiport adapter.
And I'm OK with that - for now. If it does an occasional retry while reading a device, I don't mind. If it fails utterly, then I'll replace it with a USB 3 multiport. But until that time, I'll leave it alone.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-01 08:22 pm (UTC)